If you've seen my posts on Google+, you'll know that I'm in favor of allowing people to post and comment under long-term pseudonyms with no connection to the author's legal name, as LiveJournal allows, and that I feel strongly enough about this to have stopped using Google+ over it. (I'm more ambivalent about purely anonymous comments because I've seen the antisocial behavior they can lead to.)

Anyway, today I found out that a new front has opened on the issue: scienceblogs.com (former home of biology/atheism megablog Pharyngula) has been taken over by National Geographic and changed its policy to prohibit its bloggers from being pseudonymous. Scienceblogs has been on a downward slide for some time so I don't think the loss of pseudonymity there is a particularly big blow, but it's a sign of which way the wind is blowing.

Another very interesting recent piece on the subject: an insider's view on the nymwars at Google. Apparently: Vic Gundotra is leading the anti-pseudonym charge, he is very aware that this position disadvantages women, political dissidents, and other underprivileged people (not to mention people with unusual legal names), and he doesn't care because he doesn't think his real user base of privileged white men will care.

If you're interested in keeping up with the issue, #nymwars is the tag to search for on twitter. Or, for a well curated collection of stories on the subject, see Botgirl Questi's scoop site.