After reading Gavins thread on public relations, I wanted to find an easy way to make Bitcoin come across as a more professional, trustworthy project. I don't need to explain why that's an important image to establish.
So I changed my forum display name from [mike] to my real name, which was easily available from the BitCoinJ project anyway. Quite a few important players in the Bitcoin community aren't actually anonymous even though they use nicks on this forum. When people evaluate Bitcoins potential, one question they ask is, who are these people? Is anyone seriously standing behind this project? Just using our real names when posting is a simple step that will re-assure people who are deciding whether it's worth their time. So I encourage you to do the same - it's easy to do by going into the profile tab and clicking "Account Settings".
Here's a quick reference guide to some of the communities top contributors, based on publicly available information:
There are a few others I know based on private information. If you're OK with appearing here (or not appearing here) let me know.
BTW I know plenty of people posting in these forums prefer to be totally anonymous, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So I changed my forum display name from [mike] to my real name, which was easily available from the BitCoinJ project anyway. Quite a few important players in the Bitcoin community aren't actually anonymous even though they use nicks on this forum. When people evaluate Bitcoins potential, one question they ask is, who are these people? Is anyone seriously standing behind this project? Just using our real names when posting is a simple step that will re-assure people who are deciding whether it's worth their time. So I encourage you to do the same - it's easy to do by going into the profile tab and clicking "Account Settings".
Here's a quick reference guide to some of the communities top contributors, based on publicly available information:
- gavinandresen - obvious, no need to introduce the project maintainer
- MagicalTux - Mark Karpeles, owner of MtGox and Kalyhost
- vladimir - Vladimir Marchenko, seller of mining contracts
- xf2_org - Jeff Garzik, who used to do kernel development at Red Hat
- Hal - Hal Finney, one of the creators of PGP
- mndrix - Michael Hendrix, creator of the (sadly defunct) CoinPal and CoinCard services
There are a few others I know based on private information. If you're OK with appearing here (or not appearing here) let me know.
BTW I know plenty of people posting in these forums prefer to be totally anonymous, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Mike,
i think this is a great idea but it would be even more helpful if ppl listed their credentials as well. a name by itself does nothing for me beyond the nickname. however, credentials, education, etc would really make me more confident that the place is being run by adults who know what they're doing rather than by a bunch of young geeks/ hacksters.