Man, IRC was so toxic in many regards. Two stories:
On EFnet, there were aggressive racists in positions of authority. References to burning crosses, etc. Many of the earliest bash.org quotes originated there, including the idea that "the bash.org 'worst' quotes list is just "the best racist jokes list." The place was in generally incredibly abusive, and frequent channel and nick takeovers. The expectation of anonymity was a feature that enabled this behavior.
On Freenode, things were better. Pseudonymity let you hide from others but less so admins. But still there was a period of time where everyone was getting PM's about an IRC network where black people were banned (also, the thing was offensively named). It got so bad they had to institute a system to prevent DMs from unregistered accounts. You may also recall that one of Ubuntu's earliest contributions was a Code of Conduct, and that this was relevant because the #debian-* help channels were borderline abusive.
So yea, you didn't have to identify yourself, just humiliate and dissociate.
On EFnet, there were aggressive racists in positions of authority. References to burning crosses, etc. Many of the earliest bash.org quotes originated there, including the idea that "the bash.org 'worst' quotes list is just "the best racist jokes list." The place was in generally incredibly abusive, and frequent channel and nick takeovers. The expectation of anonymity was a feature that enabled this behavior.
On Freenode, things were better. Pseudonymity let you hide from others but less so admins. But still there was a period of time where everyone was getting PM's about an IRC network where black people were banned (also, the thing was offensively named). It got so bad they had to institute a system to prevent DMs from unregistered accounts. You may also recall that one of Ubuntu's earliest contributions was a Code of Conduct, and that this was relevant because the #debian-* help channels were borderline abusive.
So yea, you didn't have to identify yourself, just humiliate and dissociate.