Comment by kerkeslager

Women gamers compared to white male psychiatrist bloggers who occasionally criticise feminism? Yes.

There's no mystery here. Scott belongs to a class of people for whom sympathy is not culturally trendy at the moment.

> Is the Times really more sympathetic to gamers than psychiatrists or bloggers?

It's more sympathetic to women than men. They won't directly tell you: "We protect women but not men", but that's the implicit policy of many institutions, especially mainstream media.

> what else could explain it? I'm stumped.

That's irony, right? It's hard to tell these days.

I'm surprised no one brought up the possible explanation that those female gamers are anonymous while Slate Star Codex is pseudonymous, not anonymous. If you read his post carefully, he mentions that his identity is actually public knowledge. His main concern is with NYT drawing attention to this, making him a public figure and making it "too easy". His entire thing is protecting pseudonymity, not anonymity.

I have a hard time seeing how the statistic that the Times receives twice as much money from readers as from advertisers is evidence that the NYT "serves advertisers rather than readers". I think that probably puts them in the top 10% of media outlets in terms of how financially independent of advertising they are.

>NYT doxxes sources

not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".

I think it's equally plausible that the NYT believes that doxxing sources does serve their readers. Perhaps a significant portion of the NYT's paying subscribers are against anonymity in sources? Who knows.

Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?

> Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.

If the NYT actually thinks they need to use the real name of the author of Slate Star Codex to add credibility to a story about the blog, they're delusional.

I think it's much more likely that they simply don't care about the valid personal concerns of people they write about.

Well, in that case, the journalists should adapt and give credibility through pseudonymity.

I think the person you are responding to was trying to figure out what kerkeslager's point was, rather than stating his own conclusion. I am a bit confused myself as to what the connection is between name-publishing policies and sources of funding.

It is a pretty damn dubious measure of credibility and it has already failed when suggested for civility.

I am honestly starting to think real name policies are just about hating anominity at this point.

> Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.

What about not revealing sources? Didn't journalists used to go to jail for that one?

Wait, did you just claim that the NYT is part of "the modern left"?

If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left".

And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.

The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around.

There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.

Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession.

In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.

Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you think.

The policy doesn't even seem to be very consistently applied. There are a couple excerpts from articles floating around that happily use pseudonyms for, eg, one of the Chapo podcast hosts.

The NYTimes is filled with anonymous sources as well as pseudonymous sources -- look at many articles about Banksy.

This is just a hit on someone the reporter viewed as not sufficiently an ally in the culture war.

An anonymous source seems materially different from a pseudonymous source, especially when that source is being quoted about their enormous body of work.

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