[h2odragon]

What's wrong with being who you are, openly? Do you have any faith that your serial accounts can't be connected by anyone who cares to do so? In other words, what can you hope to gain with this effort?

FWIW i've been "h2odragon" since 1991, in a series of fora.

[jmillikin]

Every post has many readers, now and in the future, and you never know what their mental situation might be like. For many people the value of a persistent identity isn't worth the risk.

I used to post under a pseudonym, but one day a person stalked through that account until they found my (pseudonymous) website, then my name, then called my employer with the goal of getting me fired. They did this because they were upset I had written a programming example in Haskell. My employer at the time was a defense contractor and they luckily (for me) decided to put the event into the "unknown third-party is threatening a TS/SCI employee" bucket, with a response as subtle as might be expected.

Unfortunately, there are people in other circumstances who face a legitimate risk of losing their job and/or career if they attract attention from some passing lunatic. That's why it's considered good practice to avoid tying too much sensitive information together in one account.

Nowadays I post under my name on (semi-)professional forums like HN, and anonymously elsewhere. No pseudonyms, because they provide a false sense of security.