[nadams]

I really don't know why you are being downvoted - but this is pretty spot on. I know one of the science subreddits started to add flair for people who proved they had X degree or background. Which I think it great - you know you are talking to a biochemist working with real science and not just some guy who spent 5 minutes on the wikipedia page.

I know a lot of people want to be anonymous on the internet - and that's fine but it's depressing to see someone pretend to be an authority figure on a subject just to find out the person is a high school student (trolling or not). And it's usually pretty easy to spot.

If this [1] person was actually experienced they would know that the menu setups change depending on how you answered the question when Visual Studio first runs (at least it used to) - and menus/buttons may be missing/moved depending on that answer (I've seen this first hand and it's quite annoying trying to explain to click on something that doesn't exist). But instead he degrades the person asking for help.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/5fmcFUh.png

[xirdstl]

That's exactly right. Anonymity has its place, but it lacks the context that comes with identity.

How often have I wished I could at least see the age of someone when reading through comments.

[nadams]

> How often have I wished I could at least see the age of someone when reading through comments.

I don't know if age is as useful as something like list of projects, publications, or contributions. Something to denote saying "yes - this guy has been down the path I have and released it's a dead end" rather than just spewing what he learned in class or some random article on the internet.

Someone laughed at me on reddit when I told them you didn't need a lot of money to make a good game (as you can outsource if you need to - trust me there is someone in India who is willing to create that sprite sheet for less than $20 versus your artist friend would charge $200+). They claimed you needed like $X million. An obvious counter-example would be Terraria - I know not everyone likes it but I think it's a pretty successful and well put together game. It was made by 2 guys sitting in a home office somewhere. I asked him how many games he worked on - I believe he responded with, if I remember correctly, 3.