ArticlesI recently summarily dismissed Jakob Nielsen‘s recommendation to have an Author Photo on your blog. That wasn’t intentional. My post was rambling all over the place without a clear direction, and I forgot I had another point to make.
I don’t have an author photo here for a several reasons.
Anonymity
I am trying to maintain a level of anonymity.
I don’t pretend that, having found this site, you couldn’t find my name after only about 5 minutes digging, but I would prefer that people googling my real name didn’t find this site. My ideas are open to anyone. The fact that they are my ideas is not. I don’t want to be judged by them in 20 years’ time, in the same way I don’t want to be judged now by what I said 20 years ago. When I become President of Australia, I will quietly delete this blog, and I trust each of you who know who I am not to give way my secret identity!
Irrelevancy
I don’t think it relevant for being persuasive. My ideas should be able to stand on their own no matter what I look like.
If you need to see my photo to understand my arguments, there’s something very wrong with my arguments or your way of understanding them. If you use my photo to decide not to believe my arguments, well how much more ad hominem can you get?
Author photos do help with tribal affiliation; Neilsen’s chosen photo with a blue suit and yellow tie can probably used to draw many conclusions about him – conclusions you shouldn’t trust, because they are so easily manipulated.
Neilsen writes:
You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you’re not trying to hide.
Interesting! I am trying to hide my identity, so I can speak more openly. You should trust me more because of it!
Not Playing on my Looks
I am not trying to to play on my stunning good looks to get readers (c.f. Soccergirl [NSFW]).
Compromise
I do agree with Nielsen that using faces helps people remember and recognise a site better than names alone – it is a better branding device.
My proposed compromise is to use a non-identifying, branding image instead – see LiveJournal for many examples (e.g. Silhouette who uses a non-identifying photograph of herself, or Vinz Klortho who uses a real name but an arbitrary photo of a B-grade actor).
The only reason I haven’t followed up with this compromise, is that I don’t have an OddThinking logo… yet.
Comment by elburro on December 9, 2005
I must agree with you on this. It makes the internet such a wonderful thing in a fucked up world like ours. It only counts what you have to say, there is no prejudice whatsoever. And that certainly can’t be bad thing.
Comment by Alastair on December 9, 2005
I feel the same way about anonymity, and decided that a photo did not make me more searchable-for (obviously I need more grammar learnings, but you get what I mean).
I don’t think a photo makes you more authoratative or even believable, but it potentially makes you more memorable. Multi-modal learning and all that. I read J. Random Blog, but I remember it better if I have a mental image of J. Random Blogger. Like you say, it’s a branding device.
I think the general point that Neilsen makes about anonymity being harmful to credibility is a good one. If you’re anonymous you need to work harder to be credible. This is my perception anyway. I certainly don’t trust anonymous sources *more* than identified ones (as you seem to be implying).
Comment by Sunny Kalsi on December 10, 2005
[ Sunny gave instructions on how to find a picture of Julian; I decided security-through-obscurity is better than none at all, so I removed it. – Julian]
Incidentally, if you write multiple < in a comment box it screws up firefox (1.5 under linux). Also incidentally you could warn people that googling soccergirl is not worksafe. [Done – Julian]
Also, I use characters from a fighter. Perhaps you can use a clown’s face?
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on December 12, 2005
[In response to the edit to Sunny’s comment:]
Gee, Julian, juggling your anonymity must be very hard. 🙂
Comment by Julian on December 12, 2005
Hmmm, I didn’t mean to make it a puzzle challenge to find my full name. If I did, I would make the rules clear. It is not to go from OddThinking to my full name. It is to go from my full name to OddThinking or from OddThinking to my current employer.
I tend to self-censor to avoid expressing opinions (positive or negative) about my employer or my industry, but defence-in-depth suggests my employer should remain anonymous too.
Comment by Sunny Kalsi on December 15, 2005
On the contrary, I think one of the things you need to worry about is someone knowing your name (say, from a resume), and typing it into google, with perhaps some of the information from said resume to see if (s)he can dig up some dirt…
Comment by Julian on December 15, 2005
Sunny, you said “on the contrary”, but then you went ahead and agreed with me!