Transparency, Opacity, & Who's on First?

David Weinberger--noted blogger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, attender of more conferences than you can shake a stick at--makes this contribution to the Strumpette blog, commenting on the virtues of non-transparency:

Anonymity and pseudonymity allow people to participate on the Web who perhaps aren't as self-confident as the loudest voices we hear there. It's even been known to enable snarky bloggers to comment archly on their industry, even if sometimes they play too rough.

All of which is just fine and dandy. This business gets more interesting, however, when you consider that Amanda Chapel, the proprietor of Strumpette, is considered by many to be a fiction--that is, a pseudonym. In fact, Weinberger linked to his Strumpette article on his own blog, and got this comment from Seth Finkelstein:

That's hilarious, in a certain postmodern way - you know "Strumpette" is a cynically fake "persona", right? One constructed for attention-grabbing (or, more accurately, attention-whoring?). It's non-transparency masquerading as transparency, in a way that's almost over the top enough to be a parody of the whole concept.

Should it be transparent, or is it one of the cases for the shadows?

Now, I've got to say, I an fascinated by the ways people can play around with identity online--especially when that play isn't harmful--so I find this multi-blog Dance of the Veils or Ploys of Personae quite interesting. And I also utterly agree with Weinberger on the virtues of pseudonymity in general and situation appropriate non-transparency in particular.

(Seth Finkelstein, on the othe hand, appears to be a bit miffed all around, which is probably neither here nor there.)

Strumpette, by the way, might be a perfect instance of Stephanie Hendrick's identity equals reputation postulate regarding lack of transparency.

(A certain Derek Leverington believes Strumpette to be a certain Brian Connolly. Which others do not believe--including, Doc Searls, one of Weinberger's Cluetrain co-authors. I'm agnostic on the whole issue, also delighted to have come round in a circle.)