Does the use of an alias on the Internet help or harm others?

To:  All of the kind people who want a healthy community,

On another blog post, we have been discussing a topic similar to the above.

That post has collect about 100 comments.

I have taken the position of supporting the need for more real people to be honest, open, and responsible.  Others have cited some useful reasons (for them) to remain using an alias.

My goal is to get people to think about why they do what they do.

I find that as soon as I take a position, someone assumes that I am somehow threatening them.  And, I seem to get more than my share of people who want to trash me.  Or, so it seems.

I see where some programmers have now created a large number of Twitter accounts based on aliases.  Their goal is to dupe the people who advertise on Twitter into believing that Twitter has more traffic (eyeballs on their ads) than the reality of the situation.

Here is the link to my source regarding Twitter.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/fake-twitter-followers-becomes-multimillion-dollar-business/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130406