Similar to something I've been brainstorming, but with one key difference. A pillar of my hypothetical crowd-sourced news platform is anonymity. Emphasis of tr

Similar to something I've been brainstorming, but with one key difference. A pillar of my hypothetical crowd-sourced news platform is anonymity. Emphasis of trust is placed on the computed reputation of the poster, who may choose to be nameless or use a pen name for each post. With WikiTribune, trust is established by linking the name of the author to their identity, which can allow the reader to judge character and fall into an appeal to authority bias. I think these things might ultimately be bad for journalism in the world we currently live in. Sensitive topics need to be handled anonymously to avoid harassment, and the Wikitribune policy of "whitelisting" pseudonyms will turn away people who don't want to rock the boat where they can. Additionally, it allows people to become victims or beneficiaries of identity politics. We shouldn't judge the merit of a contributer by their real world identity, but by the quality of their contributions. This can, along with a gatekeeping system that prevents high-interest topics from being edited by a user who lacks sufficient rep, allow for a healthy news community to flourish, without the need for putting a target on the backs of every amateur journalist who wants to talk about what dangerous people are doing and not just run of the mill politics. I would rather contribute to a community headed by the legendary Jimmy Wales than start my own community, so I will approach him with my concerns to see if he can't see things my way. How do others feel about this trade-off in trust?