Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by robotresearcher 3492 days ago
But you're cool with anonymously posting a public accusation of unprofessional behaviour without supporting evidence?

(edit: apparently people are cool with this. That's weird. I'm not claiming the parent is untrue, it's just that you shouldn't talk smack about people in public without presenting evidence if you don't use your real name.)

4 comments

if you don't use your real name

From what does the supposed requirement to use one's real name derive?

It's not a requirement. It's common decency. Accusing someone of sockpuppetry is no different than calling him a liar. Doing it from behind a pseudonym without offering any evidence is irresponsible and cowardly, as it gives that person no way to defend his reputation.
No one's reputation is at stake with internet comments from anonymous posters.

The internet is protected from the forces that threaten physical forums where each voice is a real person. You cannot pay off the internet to talk nice about you, and you can't follow anon home and beat him up for speaking negatively. It sounds like Jurgen has accumulated some bad karma on the internet; this is not baseless accusation as much as it is keeping ourselves at a healthy level of skepticism regarding someone who has already lost our trust. The cowards with loud, strawman accusations are usually appropriately downvoted when their criticisms are out of place.

To be fair that accusation is also mentioned in the article.
Maybe I overread it, but I didn't see it.
From paragraph 7: "He has been accused of taking credit for other people’s research and even using multiple aliases on Wikipedia to make it look as if people are agreeing with his posts."
"Has been accused". Evidence lacking.
I do not take a position on the accusation. The purpose of the comment to which you are responding is to support emmelaich's assertion that the accusation is mentioned in the article.
Hey Jurgen, I'm a big fan of your work
Hey Jurgen, I'm a big fan of your work!
Clearly you're being downvoted by Teodolfo's sockpuppets.