There is nothing creepy about being anonymous on the Internet. It was the default mode since the time when one user couldn't keep track of all the Internet users in his head.

Until now I have always been anonymous unless I specifically chose otherwise. That's not creepy, it's normal.

Unfortunately current trend is against pseudonyms. Lately I'm often encountering people who are genuinely surprised that I don't use my legal name.

The OP is right. If privacy/concern of safety is so important to some people, they should re-evaluate their need for this product.

Google+ != the internet.

For me, the bigger issue is correctness: through various quirks of history, different groups of people know me by different, unrelated names, and I'd like my friends to be able to recognise me as we encounter each other in this new medium. Pseudonymity is a different thing to anonymity.

I know it's a delicate issue and it deserves debate, but at least I'd like the issue being discussed in a more general setting.

That being said, I think it would be another advantage of Google+ over Facebook to allow people to use pseudonyms, because it's yet another thing Facebook would never change.

Because we wouldn't be interested in Google+ if we thought it would just be another Facebook?

I mean, if the fresh launch of a beta product to an audience of mainly tech-savvy users is not the time to complain loudly about what you don't you like, what is?

I'd been rooting for Google, against Facebook on this. Till now..

But now... The thing is that Facebook so far mostly has just made noise about not allowing pseudonyms - I've only seen them ban obvious organizations from using individual accounts and then only when someone complains. If you're locked out of your Facebook account, you have to show state ID. But it's a lot easier to just another "fake" account (which is not really particular fake if it is you representing you).

I'm in a somewhat "special" neck of the woods on Facebook but I'd say more than half my friends use pseudonyms on there. If all of those got banned, we'd move elsewhere. That might be a good thing. But we sure wouldn't move to G+.

Everyone wants to be able to set their profile to their favorite color and have their favorite song autoplay, but no one wants to see other peoples crappy color schemes or hear their music that you don't like. Lots of people want to have some random name on Google+ but people don't want to interact with a bunch of people named "vagtastic" or "bluntzzz".

Conversely, don't post anything publicly and lock down your profile. My profile on G+ has my name. That's it. If someone "found" me on G+, they find my name. If they are stalking me, they already know my name I would guess. They won't get anything else unless I choose to give it to them. Which is broadly similiar to me choosing to email something to them. Don't message your stalker!

There are plenty of good positive reasons in the "pro" camp for allowing any kind of name someone wants to call themselves, including starpony76. But there are also plenty of good reasons to oppose it. Like not having a network filled with ridiculous spammy, crude, borderline offensive names just (primarily) because people like being clever.

(Oh, and if they are spam, please report them as spam: Google cares a lot about ridding spam, and that is an entirely separate issue from "starpony76".)

I am not comparing the trauma of tasteless names everywhere to being stalked -- but it would quite possible keep me from wanting to use the site. Along with a lot of other people. Which also has the effect of causing the person you are talking about not wanting to use it, either.

Any name you want was allowed for Buzz, and was certainly a turn off.

(In essence, I find it interesting that you chose to pull Buzz as your first-line example, despite the fact that Buzz failed for all kinds of other reasons against a competitor that seems to have no trouble with an "any name goes" policy.)

Twitter does not work like G+ does. G+ does however work exactly like Buzz does in this respect (for public posts).

I consider myself a fairly regular guy, and yes the naming (among other things, but the ridiculous names of people I'm not following, specifically) annoyed me to no end on Buzz. So yes, considering G+ is a Buzz clone when it comes to public posts and comments -- it will annoy me on G+, and I assume I'm not alone.

Buzz is the most perfect first-line example that exists.

Looking at my stream, by screen space the comments generally occupy about 1/3 as much real estate as the parent post. On posts I've never interacted with.

This is by design obviously -- and when the comments are good, its great. When the comments are bad, its bad. Time will tell whether G+ ends up with the type of community that can support this very in your face community intensive model.

Pseudonym vs actual name is correlated to that spectrum but not a direct relationship. People's stupid names is definitely something that makes interactions on reddit, AIM, video games, twitter, etc feel really immature to me compared to Facebook.