You're wrong about anonymity. Extensive scientific research as well as my 15 years of thoughtful observation shows that it's the GROUP who's behavior actually demands it, and is the real source of the conflicts.

Postmes [1997] (http://mudc.at/s9vHQh) using the SIDE model (social identity model of deindividuation effects) shows that anonymous participants in an online debate are more likely to stay focused on the actual issue AND the group was less likely to polarize a stance. Double win, albeit counter-intuitive (Also interesting to note that those that are most accusative of anonymity tend to be the most pugilistic members of a group).

• Say my boss is an obsessive jerk. Can I post here as myself? Express myself freely? Will you get the best of me?
  
• What if one of our lady-member's husbands is abusive and she needs some help but can't post it as herself cuz he might find it?
  
• What if one of you old fellers gets sick and needs some advice, or some love and don't want your family to find out?

See, it's all actually about The Group. The group norms, the polarization, the hive mind... it's tyrannical, authoritarian and oppressive.

Do I need to protect our members? Yes, and anonymity is actually the greatest protection I can offer.

"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions." ~anonymous (not just talking about AA's traditions, ALL OUR TRADITIONS)

Without anonymity on the internet, in our community, we are all slaves to the bully-norms, shackled by our own identities, walled-in by the persistence of the internet.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. ~Ronald Reagan

This argument has already been won:

"Freedom of expression must be allowed. With this freedom comes all sorts of problems, but these types of problems are not unique to the internet. Unpopular speech is a necessary consequence of free speech and it was decided long ago, during the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that the advantages of free speech outweigh the disadvantages. This principle should hold on the internet as well." ~M.I.T.'s Karina Rigby [1995] "Anonymity on the Internet Must be Protected" (http://mudc.at/oXgSw2).

mudcat.org's deal reads: "If anonymity is granted, it will be on condition of strict compliance with the forum rules. Subject to that, anonymity will be preserved to the extent allowed by law."

Fear not, there's a strategy:

For users:

• Use anonymity only if you have to. Frivolous uses weaken the seriousness and usefulness of the capability for others.
  
• Do not use anonymity to provoke, harass, or threaten others.
  
• Be aware of the policies of the anonymous site and respect them.
• Be prepared to forfeit your anonymity if you abuse the privilege.

For operators:

• Formulate a plan for problematic ethical situations and anticipate intense moral quandaries and dilemmas.
  
• Consider a vote or declaration either to allow or disallow anonymous posts on individual threads.
  

For readers:

• React to the anonymous information unemotionally. Abusive posters will be encouraged further if they get irrationally irate responses. Sometimes the most effective response is silence.
  
• Notify operators if very severe abuses or criminal activity occur, such as piracy, harassment, extortion, etc.
  

And are you up on the recently coined Internet Asperger's Syndrome or Harris' Law?

Jason Calacanis "We Live in Public (and the end of empathy)" http://mudc.at/rdK6bn, used the term "Internet Asperger's Syndrome" to describe the reaction to a late-90s "art project" in which his friend Josh Harris "put a couple dozen cameras all over his loft and recorded the inevitable breakdown of his life with the love of his life", and set up internet chat rooms for public discussion of the results.

The commenters in the chat rooms were so "vicious", according to Calacanis, that "it took Josh five years to recover": something about the experiment "robbed the subjects — and their audience — of every last ounce of empathy". This leads Calacanis to propose what he calls "Harris' Law":

At some point, all humanity in an online community is lost, and the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person.

And he says that he's come to "recognize a new disorder, the underlying cause of Harris' Law", Internet Asperger's Syndrome, which "affects people when their communication moves to digital", causing them to "[stop] seeing the humanity in other people", and to behave in other ways that (in his view) parallel the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome. ~ http://mudc.at/qT0UAP

Lastly, for your consideration, from "Why I Like Vicious, Anonymous Online Comments" by Matt Zoller Seitz - http://mudc.at/ofFJzS

It's impossible for anyone who reads unmoderated comments threads on large websites to argue that racism, sexism or anti-Semitism are no longer problems in America, or that the educational system is not as bad as people say or that deep down most people are good at heart.

When a person comments anonymously, we're told, they're putting a mask on. But the more time I spend online the more I'm convinced that this analogy gets it backward.

The self that we show in anonymous comments, the fantasy self, the self we see in the mirror when we fantasize about being tough and strong and feared, the face we would present to the world if there were no such thing as consequences: That's the real us.

The civil self is the mask.