[larrys]

"First you shouldn't have to hide under a new throw away account."

But you don't know who "you" is so how can you judge that they don't want to hide under a throwaway account?

What if "you" is <person who HN fawns over> or <CEO of HN's latest darling> or <someone nearing the karma point where you get to downvote> or <someone who's feelings are more easily bruised> (Karmaphiliac?)

Would be a nice feature to be able to post a comment which isn't linked to your handle w/o doing a throwaway. Said feature only available above a certain karma level of course.

Add: Or <someone who doesn't want to upset an important co-worker, boss or partner/spouse that reads HN who views things differently>

[chaostheory]

Going off-subject, I feel that one of the main reasons that HN is really civil compared to other social sites is that not many long standing HN users use throw-aways. If using throw-aways becomes more common, I feel that the comment quality will continue suffer even more, so I'm inclined to call it out when I see it.