Blogger Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D., grumbles that I did not include his

name, or a link to his TRULY BODACIOUS BLOG, when I

posted the Duke of Wellington’s Peninsular-campaign letter from an e-mail he

(Kevin, not the Duke) sent me.

There is actually an ISSUE here that I have kept meaning to raise. I often

post interesting titbits or follow-ups from reader e-mails, and I think

other Corner denizens do too. The question is: do you include the reader’s

name, or not? Some readers would much rather you NOT include their names;

some are desperate to see their names in pixels. I suppose the gentlemanly

thing would be an exchange of e-mails with the reader to find out his

preference… but who has the time? By the time he got back to me, the

original would be lost in the great e-mail ocean, and I’d have forgotten

what it was all about. So I default to the safe option, and leave out the

name. (A reader who wanted his name left out but sees it, is going to be

much angrier than a reader who wanted the publicity shot but didn’t get it.)

Could I therefore float the following suggestion to Corner readers? If you

e-mail us with anything you think might be Corner-worthy, please indicate in

some unmistakable way whether or not you would like your name included. We

could have some sort of standard code: PIN for “please include name,” DIN

for “don’t include name,” IYINIGFMWWDMMPWSMOOTWMDWAHTTASAMFWCMDITS for “If

you include name I’ll get fired, my wife will divorce me, my parents will

strike me out of their wills, my dog will admit himself to the animal

shelter, and my friends will cut me dead in the street,” and so on.