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by dang
3382 days ago
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Oh of course, throwaways are legit when the topic is personally sensitive. Some of the best HN discussions happen that way; for example there was one the other day where a couple of throwaway accounts discussed what it's like to be non-criminal psychopaths. Obviously we'd never get that without throwaways. But that is easily distinguished from the users who routinely create throwaways in order to completely depersonalize their comments. The latter is actually an attack on the foundation of HN. Legit throwaways are actually highly personal—often more personal than the main account. On HN, commenters have a personal identity (which of course can be a pseudonym if you want). If some users want a site where there are no such identities, only free-floating comments with comment IDs, they should find or create such a site and participate there instead. There's room for lots of different kinds of internet forums. HN is just one kind, but it is that kind, and the reason we have moderation, including account bannage, is to preserve it as the kind of site it's meant to be. |
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I don't digest HN this way, at least - I prefer to separate the message from the person writing it. I'm also pleased to note that there are far fewer comment-reviewing/ad-hominem rebuttals on HN than on Reddit, and far fewer 'celebrities'.
On the flip side, I'm aware of some of the downsides of anonymous posting, so I can't disagree with you there.
I'm just afraid that a lot of times that you warn against throwaways, it's towards a controversial post (that's usually downvoted for being unpopular, but not otherwise against the rules of the site). I believe those posts have a lot of value, at least in reminding people that there are other perspectives and that nothing is 'obvious' (and maybe getting them a bit more passionate :) ). I'm afraid of these disappearing, as I've seen happen on sub-reddits that become debate-free echo-chambers.