The whip that instructs!
At my school, (
www.gunsite.com) we teach that security is not only a way of thinking, but of life.
This encompasses all aspects of your being; physical, mental, and virtual.
While guns can protect your physical body, your virtual online 'body' may be vulnerable to hijacking in the form of impersonation. This is most commonly done by goblins in the form of identity theft.
But this can take other forms too, such as destruction of your reputation by posting scurrilous comments, using your name, in online discussion groups.
Just as you are required to provide proof-of-identity for certain purposes when your physical body is presented to others who don't already know you, so too do you need to have proof-of-identity when presenting your virtual body to others who don't already know you online.
This is where PGP comes in.
By creating a PGP key, and providing both the public key and key signature at a site that others already know belongs to you, you can PROVE that 'you are you' by signing your messages using your private PGP key.
Others who don't already know you (virtually), can then verify that the message being posted by 'you' (M.A.), really ARE from 'you' (M.A.), and not from someone pretending to be M.A. for whatever reason.
This also demonstrates that someone highly skilled in one medium can be woefully lacking in another.
An excellent tutorial to PGP can be found
here.
Model520Fan is not a name that has a valuable real-world reputation attached to it, built over 20+ years, that can be damaged and sued, as 'Massad Ayoob' does.
If this was a physics forum, and someone calling themselves 'Stephen Hawkings' started posting here, it'd matter. 'Quark520fan' would not.
One doesn't matter, the other does.
So, yes, in any forum, regardless of subject matter, staff SHOULD take an interest in verifying that someone using the name of a noted authority/expert/celebrity in the subject matter, really IS who they are claiming to be by using such a name.
AOX (ROT-13 signature)