Letting the internet know you're a dog...

Shel Israel, who has a far larger of number of Twitter followers, friends, etc, than I do, has a rather straightforward Twitter following policy which he has posted on his blog, Global Neighbourhoods.

Shel has a pretty simple request: he wants to know who the heck you are.

If I do not know who you are, or what you look like, or where you are coming from I will not follow you.
With very few exceptions, I will not follow brands, candidates, causes or company names. I wish to talk with humans, not brand icons, neither surveys nor bots. If you are a real person & you are passionate about your work, then I embrace you. If you are a Direct Marketer using Twitter to push you brand into my forehead, I will block you.
Even if you are a real person, I may not follow you. I need to see that you are talking either about topics or people I care about.
If you disagree with me, do it under your own name and I will respect you. If you personally insult me, I will block you. If you are consistently unpleasant or just boring, I will unfollow or block you.
With extremely rare exception, I will not follow anonymous Tweeters.

I'll give him props. This is possibly the most brilliant articulation of a philosophy which, as a longtime Internet user, I have adhered to for as long as I have been online (which has been almost half of my life). Despite the warnings from doomsayers to "never give out personal information online," I have always posted under either my real name, my initials (see my Twitter username), or with some kind of link back to my real identity (Andrew Feinberg), location (whether it has been Washington, DC, Madison, WI or Philadelphia, PA) and other information allowing people to know who is behind whatever is being written.

This has two effects (to begin with):

When I write or participate in an online community, I know that my words can be linked back to me. This is not self-censorship, but self-respect. I have enough respect for my name (or as Gary Vaynerchuk would say, my legacy) that I am willing to stand by my words and opinions. One of my main questions for social networking privacy or PR reps is how to deal with the "audit trail" you leave behind as you participate on communities or discussions. I think the middle ground that I can agree with many of them on is that honesty is the best policy, and that anonymity should be used when needed. The default should be to stand by your name.
I am easy to find and I have a reputation to protect. I make it a point to respect people because I never know when someone will want something from me, want to help me, or want me to help them. By putting my name and identity on the line, I allow myself to be more helpful since if someone likes what I do, they can ask me to help them. Case in point: last week, the guys at Mashable wanted some help covering TPS. Although it didn't work out in the end, they were able to get a hold of me because my identity is no secret.

So, if you are going to participate, stand behind your words. Political Candidates have "stand by their ads." Don't you think that Shel has a good policy, and you should "stand by your words?"

I can sympathize with parents and protection advocates who caution against sharing too much. I agree wholeheartedly. On the other hand, there is a point where you can share too little, and I think the conversation needs to move towards the center of that debate.

There's actually much more I want to say about this and inject a policy debate into it, but I want to wait until I finish Adam Theirer's report on internet safety. Being on the "education" side of that debate, I think there is a generation gap on how anonymity and pseudonymity is viewed that must be addressed before we take draconian measures or go off the deep end. I know I keep saying this, but there's more to come. There needs to be, since identity is at the heart of so many privacy issues.

I'm Andrew Feinberg, and I approve this message.