> They don't even know about the option to stay Anonymous on these kind of boards.

I think that's a lot of it. They're prompted for name and email (or recently "link") so they fill in the form because they're not sure how the forum works. It doesn't say those fields are optional.

> People want to be the big name, the well-known poster. [...] respect me!".

What was your point with this? We already know trinket-laden forums encourage junk posting... it doesn't mean that's the only way things can be.

and I suspect >>41 would consider a telephone number to be an "identity".