Well, those first three anymous postings are very clear, just basically answering the question (what do these monks think), making clear some AnonyMonks (some are probably respected monks), sometimes want to be anynomous:
* Horrible idea.
* Why would you want that? Don't you like us, the AnonyMonks? By the way, the answer is no, not yet, and as a proud member of the AnonyMonk I would be against it, because it is so much fun to know nobody knows my name.
* I am an anonymous monkette and I find your suggestion rude and silly. The AMs have always had a home in the monastery. It would be wrong to forbid us to reply to posts here.

The fourth one is very clear, giving reasons "why":

I do not like this idea. I have some reasons why.
tilly, one of our most valuable monks was in Anonymous Monk exile for a while. I certainly would not have wanted to preclude him from replying to any of my posts.
This is a public forum - public means public.
Some of the contributions to the offering plate are made anonymously - would you really want to deny someone who pays money so that you can enjoy this site from replying to your node?
No matter how idealistic you are, reality is that we have a damn good system that shouldn't be changed without serious consideration.

Anonymous Monk means:

• Not having to be afraid to be --ed, when one wants to play the XP game, and as a game it can be fun. And yes, I do check my own XP, but I know it means nothing, certainly not for me, my (little) knowledge of and exerience with Perl are not reflected by my (quite a lot of) XP at all, but still, I posted some good nodes and I am proud, also for the rep they have, I consider that for what it is, appreciation.
• Legal issues; not having to post under your real name, not having to post under a new (another) identity, being completely free in what you want to say. Any company, institution, government agency or whatever is going to have difficulties to trace it.
• I like this community because of the tolerance, the sense of humour, the knowledge, the willingness to help people. Anonimity plays a role in this. Lack of anonimity would make Perl Monks a less nice place. Making anonimity impossible might even be a reason for me to stop coming here. No big loss maybe. But still, I am not the only one who thinks that way.
• Being able to tease someone. Let them guess who is teasing. Just for the fun of it. I really love some of those anonymous comments.
• Maybe someone is using this forum for his public image, as a marketing tool. Some posts could damage that image. Let them. It does not hurt the monks. Yes, another account could be helpful, but it's a bit of a bother. Next to that, I hate that idea even more: someone with two or more accounts might ++ all his own nodes, just to play the XP game. Not fair at all.
• I like the argument "try before buy". That's just how I did it. I posted 3 anonymous posts before signing up as woolfy.
• For whatever reason they are posted anonymous, lots of the anonymous posts are brilliant. I really do not want to miss them. Was it necessary for those posts to be posted anonymously? I don't care, I'm glad they are posted anyhow.
• Lighten up. Really. If you don't want to read the anonymous posts, ignore them. If someone posts an OT node, why bothering asking "where's the Perl in this", just ignore it, please don't get angered, it's better for your heart. There are so many good nodes at Perl Monks. Why bother to make so many sarcastic remarks to the posters of the lesser nodes.
• And for the sake of the argument, replying to a useless post (well, useless maybe in your eyes), stating that that useless post is useless, well, that is really useless. Energy that could have been used more useful. The dozens of posts asking questions like "Where is the Perl in this question?", I consider those quite useless and very demoralizing.
• So, when someone posts anonymously or not, what's the difference? You still might not know who's really posting. What would be the next step after abolishing anonimity, requiring a copy of a new monks' passport? I hope not.
• It's not like making anonymous posts impossible would do any good. Monks who create a new account, and post just one node and never return, are just as irritating (or not irritating at all) as anonymous monks.

I considered posting this anonymously, just for the argument. Well, I didn't.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.