i always thought what we did on the original EIES system form the mid 70's through the mid 90's was the right way to go. default signature was your real name and there was a directory for finding out material on the person they could fill in. however, anyone at any time could use a pen name or anonymity in signing a comment. or the organizer of a conference could set up one where all comments were forced to be signed by pen names or to be anonymous so one could do Delphi Discussions. in one test of the use of pen names and real names in a risky shift expeirment in a major company using 5 person (middle managers) using pen names or using in matching group real names the significant finding was in the pen name group it was the only time they were willing to discuss past decisions of the company as being possible mistakes in setting policies. When they were debriefed the biggest fear was that they might end up working for someone whose prior decision they were critical of which could not happen if they publicly stated their view. This report is on the njit library web site devoted to the old cccc studies but also was published in a journal as well. One of my students did a thesis on using anonymity for rating professional papers. And it has always been a disappointment that no single journal ever tried doing anonymous discussions of reviews of articles to journals among the reviewers of a given paper so they would reach a resolution of disagreements and then bring in the author to also enter the discussion. This would be a big improvement of the whole publications process if done they way it should be. It is what people have to say that should be the first criteria for judging something and not who they are. when people are in a group and have similar expertise then it is even more important to expose the disagreements as a guide to what to say to understand whey those disagreements are occurring. I have a phd student building a system for exactly that purpose in emergency preparedness problem solving and planning. In such situations experience and academic viewpoints are often in conflict. there are papers in the last iscram meeting proceedings (iscram.org) by connie white and on her website. i am on vacation and my files are not handy. I did not mention Delphi in the above and of course that does bias my viewpoint considerably. What connie is doing is a Dynamic delphi where everything happens at once and people can be voting, proposing new options, changing their vote, discussing options, and viewing a changing vote process at any time. -- Distinguished Professor Emeritus Information Systems, NJIT homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff