aristotle - 9:50 am on Oct 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

A moderator of this forum has asked me to curtail my remarks about potential dishonest use of the author tag. I can understand the reasons for this request and will comply with it. However, I would like to comment on a statement by webindia, in which he wrote, referring to me and my use of pen names:

Now that thought itself makes you a faker and not ethical

Actually many authors have good reasons for using pen names. In my case, I've always used obvious pen names such as "lost soul' or "truth seeker". I haven't used those particular names, but am just throwing them out as examples ot the type of names I've used. Since they are obvious pen names, there is no deception.

And the main reason I've used pen names is because nearly all of my writing, for both books and websites, relates to controversial social and political issues. If I were to use my real name, then some extremest or fanatic might find out where I live, then come in the middle of the night and try to burn my house down. There is a long tradition of authors using pen names for reasons such as this, and most publishers have no problems with it. But I don't know whether Google allows their author tag to be associated with pen names, or whether a photo is mandatory in their system.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about this subject, so won't be making any more posts in this thread.
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Mod's note: Aristotle... you are taking my comments out of context. We cannot discuss the potential for use by spammers of the Author tag on every single thread on which the subject of the author tag appears. That is why I moved your exchange with GifAnimator to this thread, as that aspect of the topic was already being discussed here.

If webindia123's techniques seem to be outside Google's suggested guidelines, though, you're perfectly welcome to discuss his specific techniques here.

To everyone discussing this... the question of whether you want to cooperate with Google and sign up for Google+ becomes old very quickly... and is outside the topic of the thread.

The question of appropriate use of rel=publisher vs rel=author is very much on topic.
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[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:55 am (utc) on Oct 28, 2012]