Comment by doubleunplussed

> Obviously, Scott didn’t expect the blog to be so big or his anonymity to be such and issue when he started using his real first and middle names

He definitely did. Slatestarcodex was started to replace his old blog which was not anonymous and was becoming too popular for him to be comfortable with that, especially with his career starting to take-off. The old blog linked to the new one briefly to allow current readership to migrate, and then cut ties. That's why I know his real name. Perhaps he didn't expect it to be quite that big, but it being too big to be linked to his real name was part of the equation when he chose to use his first and middle names.

First and middle names are hardly better for tracking someone down than than first names only, since middle names aren't really used anywhere except very official things. Unless you have access to some official database that contains addresses and middle names or something (hey, isn't this what phone books used to be?), the middle name doesn't really add much IMHO.