After considerable internal (and external) discussion and consideration, HNN has altered its comment policy:

Pseudonyms may be used only with prior permission from HNN. Permission may be granted to bloggers who have been using a stable pseudonym for a substantial prior period, or to posters with a credible fear of professional or personal retaliation for their views. The real, verifiable name of the poster must be made known to HNN, which will hold that information in strict confidence. Once a pseudonym has been assigned, the user must continue using only that pseudonym (i.e. may not comment under both a pseudonym and their own name), unless they wish to reveal their name, in which case it must be done by altering the account so that all prior comments are properly attributed.

All permissions and approvals are the sole purview of HNN administration, which retains the right to alter or cancel permission, or even this policy, if it is abused. (To contact HNN click here.)

What this means is that our usual policing of comments and commenters will continue unabated, but that a few exceptions will be made for responsible bloggers and scholars who we can't get into the discussion any other way. My views on anonymity within HNN are pretty well known: I was probably the person in the discussion most resistant to this change. But we're going to experiment.