Omernick, Eli, and Sara Owsley Sood. "The impact of anonymity in online communities." 2013 International Conference on Social Computing. IEEE, 2013.

This case study focuses on the effects of anonymity on user participation and content quality on TechCrunch.com, a technology social news site. The study investigates the transition of TechCrunch from allowing anonymous comments through Disqus to requiring real identity comments via Facebook in March 2011. By analyzing comment quality through reading level, relevance, negativity, and the use of swear and anger words, combined with a quantitative analysis of participation changes, the research aims to understand how anonymity influences online interactions. The goal is to inform interface design decisions on similar social news platforms by assessing the impact of anonymity on the quality and quantity of user contributions.