As the dubious user of 12 screen names on TORC, I am not sure I can stay with the proposed restriction of only one screen name on B77 (not including RP characters).
When I first signed onto TORC, I used an elven name that was, conveniently, within two letters of being the same as my real name. At first I just talked about Tolkien, the movies, and other things outside myself. The sorts of things I might talk to with a friend in RL, assuming I could find one with my unusual tastes.
Then I started to talk from my heart, about how Tolkien moved me, what the deeper meanings of the movies are, and my own personal road through depression. Unlike the extreme introvert I am in public, and unlike the fully competent person I appear to be on the outside, I was able to show my heart in my discussions. It was truly cathartic, and helped both me and those I posted with, especially in the Depression thread.
Then I started to get paranoid. What if one of those other 45,000 people signed up for TORC, and reading my most intimate thoughts, was a co-worker? What if someone at work knew I was mentally ill? Most of my paranoia was due to my depression, but at the time, I was quite concerned. So I signed on with a new personna. Being slightly dyslexic, annaerual as a screen name made perfect sense: Those who knew me and my screen name (laureanna) would recognize me, and those who knew only my real name (Laurie Ann) would not make the connection. Actually, no one made the connection. And no one could pronounce the name. So I tried another, Eaglechild, which has to do with my family heritage.
Sometime after that, the paranoia lifted, along with the depression, and a funny thing happened. I started opening up in person, to my coworkers and family. Oddly enough, they did not find me to be a paraiah. Since I no longer had to hide my true self, I went back to Laureanna, and even started using it as my email, photo storage, and IM handle with friends outside of TORC.
One day I wandered into the Bards Guild Audition Hall, and found myself instantly addicted to ABC poems and RP, much to my disbelief. I couldn't stop at one RP character, so I started Hobbituated (a family of hobbits) and Janus (and Sanuj, the two headed maia/god). Annaerual and Eaglechild found a new reason for being, as RP characters. They did occasionally get out and harass Holby (but then, one of his secret characters harrassed me, so I felt no qualms about doing so). All personae eventually came out and identified themselves, not feeling comfortable with deception (especially when a young lady tried to hit on Janus )
Posterchild was supposed to be a multi-user screen name for the huge group of people (that never materialized) that were going to put together the META Movie Forum. Eventually, though, Posterchild escaped and started posting on his own, even making an appearance at the last awards ceremony.
I know there are other reasons to have multiple screen names - to deliberately hide a mod identity, a gender, or another side to one's personality, and I agree those reasons are not in keeping with the desired openness of Board 77. But on the other hand, to twist a phrase, "if aliases are outlawed, only outlaws will have aliases". There is no way to keep out multiple screen names, if a person really wants to have them.
What say you?