rogerd - 6:59 pm on Oct 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

Good analogy, chadmg. When we meet someone in person, we have lots of cues to evaluate their credibility - their appearance, dress, manner of speaking, apparent knowledge of a topic, etc.

Online, there are fewer cues. We can evaluate the content of a post for seeming credibility, we can look at past posts, and we can look at the poster's info - name, avatar (if any), post count, date joined, and perhaps profile info. Certainly, this is skimpy information, but it's something.