I am not clear whether it was a joke or not – and by this I assume you mean that he doesn’t really do this, not that he does this with the intent to be funny. Even more importantly, now 50,000 plus readers of his blog have an idea that many of them think is funny and may attempt on their own.

I don’t think this is a huge issue, but I do find it interesting to see where people draw the line.

@David -

I believe signing with a completely fictitious name is different from a privacy perspective and certainly from a motive perspective (there is no intent in your case). Even signing “John Smith” when we know there are many of them around doesn’t have the same impact as something with more identifying information: there are probably few (perhaps just one) Robert Sawyer’s in Toronto.

Btw, Robert Sawyer (or someone pretending to be him) commented on the blog post as well.