As I recall, anon posting was stopped for the following reasons:
• Members were unable to discuss, compare, etc, encourage each other and suggest improvements by sharing/showing entries during contests as it was against the anonymity rule;
• The "improvement factor" mentioned earlier. Members voting couldn't assess a post by the standard of the author (eg, if a new or less experienced member posted an entry that was a personal best, noone could see it as such because they didn't know who did it until the contest closed);
• Anonymity can be easily broken anyway by members "cheating" using e-mail or IMs to "vote whore" (now there's a phrase I've not seen for a while!
) - sharing their entry privately and touting for votes from friends and others.
(Ok, so whoring can go on without anonymity too, but at least it's more easily noticeable and it's more of a level playing field, rather than having the "good" members obeying the rules and losing out through being anonymous.)
There may have been other reasons. If so, I'm sure another "oldbie" will come along and add them - if s/he can be bothered! We've been around this subject
so many times before...