Those are good reasons, but I’m unwilling to have a completely unauthenticated forum for a practical reasons: spammers and trolls.
Stack Overflow requires authentication. For the stan-users Google group, someone could do the same by registering under a pseudonym. I’m sure this is already happening.
I agree with Daniel, although my reasons are a little different. The JAGS mailing list has some people posting with pseudonym accounts and some with real names. In general there are no dumb questions and Martyn is extremely responsive and kind. The issue I see is that the pseudonymous commenters more often ask poorly thought out questions (i.e.-they don’t read their error messages, ask ambiguous questions, don’t explore solutions that are offered) and when I was active on the JAGS mailing list it got really old. I think it helps ask better questions when they realize that their words are on the internet forever.
That said I think reason #2 is important and I’m ok with pseudonymous accounts, I just don’t want to encourage that as the first option. You could even register via a burner e-mail if you wanted to, lots of websites let you generate those.
I agree with this. What about creating a post that tells people
concerned about privacy/anonymity how to create a temporary e-mail
address from one of the well-known services? I think that’s a solid
compromise.