Alright, I take it back: Maybe I should have said NOBODY "hates GUESTS" as such, except brucie.   

I don't agree though.

"If they had belief in what they say about others, they'd sign their real names." Well, most people who post to the Mudcat as members don't use their real names. They have all kinds of weird and wonderful pseudonyms. That doesn't matter, they serve to distinguish posts from each other, so that it makes it possible to carry on a discussion. And it means you can get to know people over a number of threads, and build up friendships (and the reverse too, if that's what you are into). Often without having the faintest idea who the people are, or where in the round world they live.

And when people post as GUESTS, the same is true. No reason they should feel any obligation to put "their real names", any more than the rest of us.

For some people they have no choice but to post as GUESTS, because they are using computers that won't accept the cookie that goes with membership. And there are people who don't feel happy about joining anything online, probably because they have been burnt before, and haven't been around here long enough to trust us.

So far as members posting as GUEST with an alternative pseudonym goes, one reason, as brucie says, is because "an issue is very sensitive or so personal". There are other reasons - there are occasions when a post or two from someone such as "GUEST,Albert Einstein" might, for example, be a way of lightening a thread. I'm sure there are other reasons, and I can't see any harm in it. (When people use the facility utmost insults or personal attacks that they would not feel able to make in the open, that of course is quite a different thing.   But most GUEST posting by members is not like that.)

But what is never acceptable is to use the name under which someone else posts - and that is really why posting without any name at all is so unhelpful, because that is a "name£ which has been used by a great many people.