Your forum posts would indeed be listed under the name you choose in the search results of internet search engines. "Jeff Atwood" site:meta.discourse.org yields these results, for example:
Discourse New User Tips and Tricks - blog - Discourse Meta
codinghorror ( Jeff Atwood ) 2016-12-16 12:38:53 UTC #2 If there are any other tricks and tips - non-obvious essentials that every new Discourse user should know , please provide suggestions on that here.
I for sure wouldn’t want it to be mandatory to give a real name. What I want is an amicable atmosphere where I can get to know people by their (first) name if they want to share it with me.
And I do think that real names influence the discussion culture of an online community. It’s much easier to insult each other if you are hiding behind a nickname and the other person is just a nickname themselves. Not saying that it happens often here, but I could also speculate and say it is because many people chose to use their real name as user name.
Ultimtely it boils down to the question: Do we trust people to know what they are doing or do we not?
@Monica.Ciovica Could you share your views on this topic?
Edit.: I’ve just consulted the user database and here are my findings:
- 14693 out of 20526 users have their real name set. This is 71.6%.
- 10350 real names contain a space (indicating that a last name is set). This is 50.4% of all users.