| HN Mirror

I had seen all those previous threads except for raganwald's "Worse is Better" link. I admit that link does make a decent case for the sock-puppet theory. However, I still think that nickb was a real person. I was an avid reader of New Mogul (great site, well done), and nickb's contributions there, as you know, were very extensive. The sheer volume of Nick's combined activity on both HN and NM casts doubt on the sock-puppet theory in my mind. Furthermore, in addition to finance, Nick seemed genuinely interested in B2B enterprise software sales strategy. I corresponded with him on email about that subject a few times. If you follow PG you know that is a subject that he takes no interest in and in fact encourages all the YC companies to eschew enterprise sales. Also I remember someone during one of the "where's nickb" discussions here or on NM around the time of his disappearance saying that he knew that Nick lived in Ottawa and was going to try to check up on him in person. The idea that Nick lived in Ottawa was corroborated by other comments that Nick or others had made in the past...I believe he might have been a professor there. Anyway my point is that there was so much effort behind nickb's contributions and enough detailed differentiation between him and PG that if he were indeed a sock-puppet the ruse would seem to go beyond being a joke and cross into the realm of split-personality, and for me that is a bridge too far. Then again I did always wonder why PG pulled him off of the leaders board after he disappeared:

http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

And as far as I remember PG never really commented on his disappearance. Either way, sock-puppet or no, I would very much like to know the rest of the story. Perhaps Ms Lowrey will one day solve the mystery for us.