The thing that surprised me most is how publicly abrasive people can be when they're using their Real Names with real photos and real descriptions of their chil

The thing that surprised me most is how publicly abrasive people can be when they're using their Real Names with real photos and real descriptions of their children and pets just a click away, talking to people who live just down the street. When I signed up for Geni, a few unstable relatives (avoided IRL) started fights on the message boards and it put me off the entire social family tree concept (the copious amounts of spam that Geni sent out didn't help, since many people lacked the computer savvy to opt-out, and it made them even more hostile). My guess is that something similar happens with Nextdoor: you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family, or your neighbors. In the case of LinkedIn, and Yammer, trolling is far less of a problem, because there can be consequences for misbehavior, and it is easy to unfriend someone on FB, or unfollow/block on Twitter. Unless there was some way to control trolls and nutters, I wouldn't sign up for Nextdoor.