The article quotes: "If you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible", which I think G+ tried to do.

On mailing-lists, worst case there is "that guy", and you can filter them out. Maybe you'll meet at a conf eventually and work things out in person. On Twitter/Facebook, you have to spend a lot of time blocking people and trolls have full control of the platform.

I think it was because of the type of people who were early adopters. Essentially, he thought it would produce a better class of discussion.

EDIT: from his interview: 'I tried G+ for a while, because the people on it weren't the mindless usual stuff, but it obviously never went anywhere'

Tied to real identity - given the current state of the net one could make a case that the S Korean system of requiring gov ID # for all online signups would be an improvement, of course that opens the door to serious abuse but at this point would it be the lesser of two evils?

This is the exact opposite of correct. Old school forums were pseudonymous, but managed to do OK on the moderation front because they were often controlled by the community. Tying real world identity to sign-ins just paints a big fat target on those that have the most to lose already, such as minorities.

As an example, check out the myriad articles about Google users being outed as trans when Google started integrating Google+ into everything: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/07/google-ha...

Pseudonymous identity was identiy enough

Everyone here is mixing up identification with reputation. Identification isn't necessary; in fact it's a bad thing. But reputation within a community is good and necessary.