Jeff writes:

I haven't tried to disguise my persona: Jeff is my real name.

Right. Your self-disclosed identity consists of "Jeff". 390,000,000
hits on Google for your "From:" header "Jeff" today. 119,000 for mine,
including all of the first 10.

I just don't
see the point of publishing my home address and phone number in a
usenet forum.

Identities should be disclosed to keep people honest and earnest,
something lacking on Usenet. Fear of disclosure (evidenced, for example,
by obscuring your email address, or using only your given name) is a
sign of weakness, timidity, and inability to defend yourself in the
virtual and/or real worlds. Without genuine identities, Usenet degrades
into a running farce, which it mostly is. Also, if we can also know
something about you, then you will be humanized, instead of being a
cranky abstraction worthy of disrespectful discourse.

Now by "identity", I don't mean your address or phone. Just enough
that, say, in a court of law, you could be tied to what you wrote, and
inversely, knowing your name, I can find out what else you've written.
This makes you accountable for your words. Lack of accountability makes
for mischief.

You seem to know a lot about faux personae. I wonder what the real
Richard Finch would say about that?

The funny thing is, the ugly side of Usenet stems from anonymity, but
when one tries to be up-front about one's identity (nonymous?), still
more abuse follows. Anonymous Usenet, like CB radio did in the 1970s,
reveals human nature from its normal civilized disguise.