JavaFan,

This is a very rigorous analysis of the metaphor—a metaphor that I agree with you probably originated as little more than a play on ".pm" or some such. My more casual and much less deeply thought out perception of the monks-in-a-monastery pretense is that PerlMonks is a fraternity and its participants feign brotherhood. You see this every day in posts that begin with monkish salutations.

My only point—the one I made in my original post—is that the PerlMonks' Anonymous Monk username, which is so often used here, doesn't seem to me to be very (How shall I put it?) brotherly-loving. You and others have explained various reasons why the generic username is useful and desirable and I accept those rationales on their merits. I make no specific argument against them.

I'm outclassed by the rhetorical skills of others here who write better and more persuasively than I do. I cannot win an intellectual argument with people who are much cleverer than I am. Nonetheless, I believe the downsides of the generic Anonymous Monk username likely outweigh its benefits. That's my gut sense of the thing.