[angusgr]

It's ironic that I immediately tried to contextualise your opinion by finding out who you were, but your HN account is new and your pseudonym is anonymous.

Although, if your opinion is correct, it doesn't mean anything that I can't look you up online.

Speaking from my lesser experiences, the best professional *nix programmers I have worked with left some traces of themselves online, but I don't think it correlated that closely with their skills. They definitely don't have web sites proclaiming their Ultimate Hacker Ability - why would they need such a thing?

[lsc]

The number of posts, certainly, doesn't correlate with skill. But the quality of post, I think, does. I know many people who are obviously better than I am who post a lot less than I do. However, a person with sufficient skill could take a sampling of those posts, and a sampling of my posts and pretty quickly come to a conclusion as to our relative skill levels.

[lolname]

Although, if your opinion is correct, it doesn't mean anything that I can't look you up online.

That's on purpose. I establish new HN accounts from time to time because I despise the fact that many people will upvote old users more readily, or will cite 'user for a long/short time' as though it means something.

[lsc]

In most social situations, having a history of contributing to the group is important. This is part of why I try to spend time on mailing lists for software I use/am likely to use even when I don't need help. If I have a history of helping others, others are much more likely to help me when I need it.