| If it's important to the conversation, the commenter can point out their own past experience (which Animats did by saying "As one of the early workers on network congestion"). Just because it's difficult to remove the "person" from the "message" in face-to-face conversation doesn't mean we can't strive for something better online. I have a very relevant example! A few days ago I was reading a comment here about someone that drinks tap water and how (anecdotally) they are fine, and they didn't understand the craze with bottled water. Being completely honest, I made a "mental picture" of him as a mid 20's "hipster" silicon-valley type. And I agreed with his overall message. But halfway through his comment, he had a link to his "beverage container of choice" that he drinks water from. I read the whole comment before opening that link. I had assumed that it would point to a glass and leather "artisan" water bottle... The link pointed to something similar to this: http://assets.suredone.com/1766/media-photos/sd009014-vintag... After opening the link, my whole view changed. Suddenly that "mental image" changed into a mid 40's overweight sysadmin, and (as much as I'm ashamed to say it), I suddenly "trusted" their message less... I realized what had just happened, and I realized that just thinking I knew who this person was affected my thinking. If I had known that person's age, size, gender, profession, etc... Would I have given their message a second thought? Honestly I don't think I would have. And that makes me feel like shit. I have prejudisms (is that a word?) that I don't consciously know I have, and if possible I'd like to not apply them. Reading HN comments as faceless-nameless comments helps me read the message with none of that "baggage". And if I later read about the person behind the comment (and learn that it's not what I expected), it can go a long way toward reducing the prejudice that I may have that I don't even know I have. |
> If it's important to the conversation, the commenter can point out their own past experience (which Animats did by saying "As one of the early workers on network congestion").
This is basically what I was trying to convey. By making it known via some mechanism, HN would help posters from repeatedly posting their credentials before saying something deep and insightful or unpopular. A mechanism that isn't obvious, as in a button that makes something else visible that shows something about a distinguished poster, would benefit both parties I think.