Trusted and trustworthy? | Author Profile

As a part of our TOS we stipulate that authors must provide proper authorship information in the form of a real name and current contact information.

We realize the need for some authors to remain anonymous and have not yet enforced this requirement. However, part of building trust with our readers is to assume and demonstrate responsibility for our writings.

We therefore request that any author who has achieved a "trusted" status (after 5 approved quality articles) must provide an avatar, a name and some kind of information in the bio. If you are not comfortable providing your real name then a pen name and symbolic avatar is acceptable.

I think what would be acceptable to people who want to stay anonymous, like AJ, is if the contact information provided isn't visible to the public - only to you all. 

spirituality: 22. Jun 2011, 10:09

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I think what would be acceptable to people who want to stay anonymous, like AJ, is if the contact information provided isn't visible to the public - only to you all. 

Agreed, and I am not annonomous, but I do not want my contact info, or anything but my name publicly visible.  Too many nuts online, including on writing platforms :)

Makes total sense.  :)

A good plan, plus builds credibility for our site, the Wizzley Community.

Building trust and branding just makes for good business.  

I've been writing on HubPages, and have just joined Wizzley. What makes me nervous about giving my real name, which more and more sites are asking me to do, is that my name is all that's needed to find out all kinds of info about me - including my address and email. Shouldn't caution be a part of this?

 If you are not comfortable providing your real name then a pen name and symbolic avatar is acceptable.

 Oh, and welcome to Wizzley, of course!

Yes Ryan, a fictional name (aka pen name) is fine.

Although a talking, writing pug would be preferable in your case, we won't come knocking at your door for visual verification. 

However, I believe that, in order to establish authority and trust, a head shot (preferably your own) is very beneficial. It's simple human psychology. 

I'm not sure if you're serious right now. I would think, you already know the answer.

In any case, it's not about pleasing us here at Wizzley.

Would Google show it as author profile in search results? Not likely.

Much better! 

Linking to/from G+ is not a requirement for Wizzley authors. 

The point I wanted to make about Google is that there is a reason they only show an author image if they have reason to believe that it shows the face of a human.