Yes, but what you fail to take into account Jim Dixon, is who is to judge when someone has been unfairly attacked, especially when the discussions are heated, like so many on Mudcat are? Are you going to censor a member who is unfairly attacking an anonymous guest, or just the anonymous guest who is arguing with that member, and expressing a controversial or unpopular point of view?

There is already an awful lot of censorship done in the this forum in the name of "defending members from personal attacks". How many guest messages get censored, compared to member messages? Who is making the decision as to what constitutes legitimate criticism, and what constitutes an unfair attack? And what are their qualifications for making that decision? What are the parameters they use for making those decisions? Do they even have parameters, or do they just do it on a whim? How impartial are the site maintainers being about censorship here, truly?

I believe people here are looking to the leadership--ie Max, who happens to be extremely thin-skinned, paranoid, and pretty much unable to tolerate criticism of himself or Mudcat, whether legitimate or spurious. Not surprisingly, that has attracted other people who are like that to join as members. Which is a guarantee that there will routinely be over-reactions by members and site maintainers alike, towards attacks which aren't attacks, and exist only in the minds of those paranoid, thin-skinned beholders.

The general view of and behavior towards the anonymous guest is really warped here, compared to other sites in cyberspace. As Guest Amy has pointed out, it is easy to use fake identities when signing up at Mudcat, just like it is anywhere on the internet. One can post to chat forums which require user name and password by making up that information on the spot every time one posts, and do the same for the email account. All the "required" blanks these log-ins require can be faked. ISPs and IPs are pretty irrelevant too. You need court orders to get information about the identity of users, and no site maintainer is going to go through all that bullshit because someone called one of their members an asshole, or stole someone else's pseudonym.

There are REAL problems in the world, and anonymous posting at internet chat sites like Mudcat, ain't one of them.