One of, if not the biggest problem of RYPN over the years, has been the seemingly endless ranting by anonymous posters on RYPN. They have free range of this site, add nothing to the conversations, are argumentative, and are a nuisance. Most seem complacent to their endless ranting, irrelevant opinions, and their expertise, attached to a empty resume. The inability for a poster to attach their full name to a post is why this site has lost credibility in the preservation community, and why so many of any use to this group have left. This was, is, and should be a professional site.

Enough is enough. This is a simple poll meant to ask the users of this group a simple question. Should you attach your actual name to your post, vetted by the admin and moderators (no John Doe), or do we continue to let the mouthpieces of this group run it, and run everyone off?

I'll volunteer as a moderator to vett the profiles.

Phil Martin

It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other if someone uses their real name or not. At one time, now decades ago I reveled in my anonymity. But I’ve been involved in so much stuff across the ether that that happy thought left the station a long time ago.

I will say that I will more readily accept advice or comment from those I am more familiar with or that I know have experience rather than someone of which I have no clue as to their background. My disinformation detector, though not infallible, is pretty good.

Sure, some people don’t like each other here. That’s normal. As far as any trolling goes, I just roll my eyes, consider the source for a second and then move on. No biggie.

Shoot me if you will, but moderating, a thankless job, is really the key.

This debate has transpired here several times in the past.

In principle, I refuse to post anonymously. As a writer, my word is my bond. If I can't attach my name to a report or opinion, I have no business sharing it, be it with a pen-pal or the whole world.

On the other hand, I have several times over the past two decades, been surprised to get back-channel communications (and even a phone call or two) from people who are not registered users of this forum, or who have actually posted very rarely--a couple under pseudonyms or other persons--and names that would be well-known here. It's really quite startling to meet a "celebrity" of railroading/preservation for the first time in person and have him eagerly shake your hand like a politician, then blurt quietly out of nowhere "BOY is that [certain RyPN forum member] an @$$, or WHAT?!?"

The problems are threefold:
1) Several otherwise knowledgeable and "useful" people are specifically prohibited from their employers from participating in online forums/discussions with anything even vaguely related to their work, except as an official statement from their employer. I am aware of at least two formerly active participants now under that yoke as they changed jobs, and there are a couple more who still post under their names and hope their bosses don't notice, or affirm their comments have nothing to do with their employment (as in, commenting on steam air pumps doesn't involve a modern commuter agency or subway!)

2) It doesn't matter how many disclaimers one may add to their posts. There are too many fools out there that will take anything you say about any organization as its "official position" and treat your words of even speculation as coming from a "spokesman." Consider that many of the folks in question are state or Federal employees, making their comments "government policy" by someone misconstruing their position. And I've long ago learned that what a Chief Mechanical Officer or Executive VP of a group tells me as close to "on the record" as possible may NOT reflect "official" policy once the Board of Directors or legal counsel is through arguing with him/her.

3) There's literally no way to prove, short of demanding ID images/copies be sent to moderators, that anyone can prove their name. For all anyone but my wife knows, I'm the eccentric owner of a steam locomotive collection that stole the identity of some bozo named Alexander Mitchell IV when he snuck onto my property 30 years ago and I shot him dead and buried his body.

In reality, there are enough members of this forum who have met me in person, done business with me, shared a photo line or rare-mileage excursion or work party, loaded or unloaded my car with railroadiana/parts/books, etc. to vouch for me. And I've had more good interactions than bad, at least to my face. And my attitude is that if you can't be bothered to use your real name, I'm not going to worry about what you think.

Years ago, we hosted a gathering of RyPN members at the Strasburg Rail Road, in part to put faces to the names. That's not necessarily practical nationwide--I think the entire Arizona contingent is three members spread over 300 miles one-way--but if B&O 200 manages to come off, maybe there?

I can be very annoyed by anonymous postings, but find Alexander D. Mitchell IV's response convincing. There are some people we need to hear from that just can't post without anonymity.

No login in required to read the postings, so effectively this is a public board. I do not particularly want my full, real name all over google. And, as others have pointed out, how would you verify that the "real" name provided by a user is really their name?

I think you certainly could require an email verification before a new user can register and post.

I run several forums, and I've dealt with this issue.

Here's the problem. If you do ban anonymous users, how do you "vet" the people who are signing up? Do you require a credit card to verify my ID? My state issued ID? (How would you check it? If you can't check it, all you're verifying is whether they know how to use Photoshop.)

I can understand why it can be useful to have a known identity. If somebody who works for an operation posts news or updates, it will hold more weight than some random person. But since there's no real verification, even that has to be established over time.

Unless you feel it's important enough to go through the effort to actually verify who somebody is, have a process in place, and a way to safeguard that personal info, there's really no reason to pursue it further.

My vote is no. Internet anonymity is very important to some people. Maybe they don't want certain folks from their past to easily track them down online, or perhaps their employer likes to keep tabs on their online activity, as is the case with the Class I railroads.

Forcing people to use their real names while online does nothing to promote civil discourse. Look at the cesspool that is Facebook, and to be perfectly frank some of the worst 'offenders' on this site make no secret of who they really are.

Evidently, you fellows haven't made the acquaintance of and drawn the ire of the MAGA crowd I endure on Facebook.

You fellows must not have ever experienced "doxing"....if you had, you wouldn't register using your real name anywhere. I registered with my real name on FB, much to my regret... but, it's too late now. I've served many 30 day suspensions for battling with those people. I do have one "fake" FB account, but don't use it much. I should, but don't. Most of these trumpers I battle with... they think nothing of having 4 or 5...so when they get suspended on one, they just log in on the next one and keep on attacking.

There are a multitude of search functions that whack jobs will use to follow you to the far reaches of the web....to dox you.

I've done a pretty good job of scrubbing my searchable existence off the web... name, address, photographs. I can still enter a phone number I had back in 1976 in a search, and my name still comes up with it. Same with the address for back then.... but, not the current phone and address.. they don't come back to me in any search engine that I've tried.

They will leave no stone un-turned in their zeal to find out something/anything about you that they think they can use against you... for doxing.
They know I worked for a railroad... and they'd went as far as calling the railroad and accusing me of all kinds of things... I got called in the office to set in on a conference call with folks from Omaha... grilling me about things those people accused me of. Those people don't have anything to lose... their only goal is to try and "take me down."

You remember how the MAGA-Q-anon crowd ginned up the big, fake "Comet Pizza/child sacrifice" conspiracy? How they got some whack job to go try to shoot the place up? You ever hear of "swatting". These whack jobs think nothing of it.

Using "Find-a-grave" to find out info about your family? You darn tootin'!!!!

You know the online app's that, for a fee, will let you search peoples' arrest records and stuff like that... they feel that's money well spent in their zeal for doxing material.
You know that if you look in the right places on the web, most county appraisers or taxing authorities have their records online... I can search your name and find out what properties (with addressses) you pay taxes on... I can find out if you're behind on your taxes, if you've got a lien on your property... what school district you pay taxes in

I had one whack job lady drive all the way from Arizona to my home in Kansas... in hopes of accosting me in person. (I was at work, on the train, when the camera sent me a notification with some fat bitch pounding on my front door and driving up and down the street and alley).
I'm not kidding. She was on a FB group accusing ME of sending inappropriate messages to her granddaughter!!! All made up.... nothing of any substance. I would dare her to put the messages up for the entire group to see... prove that I'm doing that... what have you got to lose?... There aren't any, and she knows it, but it doesn't keep her from accusing me of it.

I showed all the surveillance videos and FB dialog to the police here. They don't give two shits, but I wanted to cover my own ass if it came down to it.

All this stemmed from arguing about Trump!!!!!

I've got a facebook friend who is retired FBI investigator... luckily, she's like minded politically.. she's been a real asset, she's in my corner... she shows me all the ways to dig up info on those people, and especially ways to hide my info from THEM!!!! One particular guy is always accusing me of things... she found that he belonged to a "Lions Club" in a quaint little town nearby. They're pretty stoic, straight laced guys... but they had a facebook presence. Some select screen shots posted to their FB group page showing the unfounded accusations their "member" was making against me.....showing his behavior... and I didn't have any trouble out of him for a while after that..

Like who? And why do we need to hear from them if we don't actually know who they are? Why does their opinion matter?

Frankly, I think that the real reason most folks hide behind the username on this forum is that they are armchair preservationists whom exaggerate their expertise and would likely be embarrassed for the community to find out that they're just an enthusiast watching from behind a screen. I think it would be interesting to have a closed (not public) forum with real usernames and one can weigh where the expertise and comments arise from.

As a conservative, I observe the same ire on the opposite side of the spectrum. There's plenty of outrage when a conservative viewpoint gets posted on social media, ready to fight one to their death. That being said, I'm always surprised why anyone with an education would argue petty politics on Facebook. As if you're going to change anyone's mind, not to mention a complete waste of time? One of the staunchest on the left was the late director of a railroad museum in North Carolina. A great human being in person, but when he talked politics on Facebook, it would get nasty, vulgar he'd hang any conservative out to dry with rhetoric that would make a trucker blush. He died young and I often wonder why he wasted precious time on earth arguing his beliefs that half of the world agrees with and half doesn't. I think the lesson here is that if you keep the dialogue civil, as you would in person, what do you have to fear?

It's not the guys on here.... it's the possibility of doxxing. I don't care who knows who I am on here... but the fact that everything is "searchable", with enough effort, makes remaining anonymous a priority these days.

It's the same reason a person would have an unlisted phone number back in the day.

And this is- exactly the kind of post, right here that made me decide posting here was futile. The endless revisiting of dead issues despite the innumerable previously provided responses providing- in excruciating detail-the reasons why such a policy would be unworkable and is to most people inadvisable. The prevalence of such posts made me do what old wrestlers never do: Quit before the whistle or the slap on the mat.

Worse, "Mr. Martin" (Anybody can use the name Phil Martin because it does nothing to reveal who you are, since search results will be overwhelmed with this guy:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4969843/ )

has it wrong. Nobody here is anonymous. Some of are pseudonymous and others are semi-disclosed. I am the latter.

So for the Googleplex umpteenth time:

Using your real name online without a necessitous reason such as Mr. Mitchell's is incredibly foolish. In all candor, I respect his right to use his legal name, but my estimate is that unless a new poster is writing professionally and adding to his/her portfolio I would advise against it. There are instances of nefarious ne'er do wells using opinions here to attack people's professional standing. Some of us don't have the freedom that comes when you have nothing (left) to lose. It was a bad idea when data harvesting bots were all the rage, now that AI chatbots are "data scraping" it's even a worse idea.

And if you think for a minute anybody is stupid enough to send their driver's license or other photo ID to you (which you have no way to validate; anyway-I can think of several ways to evade or misrepresent myself and have you walking away stamping me "approved") and you correctly believe people would comply. then I'm seriously overestimating the readership here.





You mean "vet" right? What are you qualifications and resources for this job, and can you demonstrate your capacity, integrity and objectivity?

Of course, I'll bet you would "volunteer". I'll also bet that if you were old enough to have been in school when "hall monitors" existed; you'd have eagerly sought the position for the small bit of authority it gave you over the other kids. There are some jobs where excessive eagerness to do something for nothing can be problematic, not unlike the occasional instance of a pyromaniac joining a volunteer fire department or the medically hyper-vigilant parent who turns out to have Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

I see nothing in your post that suggests you have an informed, objective and dispassionate view; and your nebulosity (the hallmark of a rant) suggests you'd be arbitrary and capricious; using personal indignity as a guide to determine what posts are worthwhile.

This site and many others are mere tempests in a teapot. If you don't understand that, Michael Jordan has some sound advice about addiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l60MnDJklnM

There are political sites I do post anonymously on, for my physical protection, because there are haters out there who in this day and age just might show up armed at your doorstep. I do not think it is necessary here, but I'll be agnostic about whether or not they should be allowed. I don't have a problem with them, unless they are here to be a troll, then the moderators can (hopefully) take care of that.

As mentioned above, this site can be seen by the whole world. Anonymity is not a bad thing. I went on facebook for work a couple of years back. Within a short time, someone was using my name and sending friend requests to people. I had to drop off fb, unfortunately.
This site comes up as "Not secure" on my computer. Indeed, a couple of months back, someone posted using a very rude and crude username. That was concerning because it suggested that person got on board without oversight from a moderator. That should never happen.
Looking at this first page of "Interchange", as I write this post, there are only two threads that do not fully stand the test of being preservation related. One is this one, the other is about a bridge collapse, and it has been moved to railfanning. The rest are all great posts with plenty of information for the preservationists.
This site is working well. Please do not mess with it.
Vote NO!

Potential anonymity is not the reason RYPN has its reputation.