6 ms·

I always make a fresh new throwaway account here every time I make a post, and,so, by this post you can deduce yourself. This is a zero-minute account, as all m

I always make a fresh new throwaway account here every time I make a post, and,so, by this post you can deduce yourself. This is a zero-minute account, as all my accounts are. You're welcome.

nkurz 7y ago
I wish you wouldn't do that, as I think it's destructive to the community. Certainly things aren't perfect here, but certainly they could become worse. Violating the (difficult to enforce) rule that one maintain an "identity that others can relate to" contributes to making things worse.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  I think anonymity per se is not that bad, and I'm pretty sure many regularly create throwaway accounts for harmless discussion on many forums just for privacy reasons (avoid profiling & analysis, big brother, personal attacks, etc), not for posting inflammatory or controversial comments. Websites like Reddit Profile (https://redditprofile.com/about https://redditprofile.com/about) and HN Profile (https://hnprofile.com https://hnprofile.com) systematically scans all HN comments and identifies all users' expertise, personal interests, activities and emotions, and allow employers to uncover their E-mails and hire them. And it's just a one-man's startup as a social experiment, larger agencies and corporations have at least many order-of-magnitude higher budgets. And I definitely think not everyone wants that. The problem, I think, is this type of behavior encourages inappropriate uses and abuses of anonymity.
dredmorbius 7y ago
FYI: that's explicitly discouraged. You're welcome to create throwaways where appropriate. But in doing what you're doing, you're very likely making it more difficult for those with a legitimate need to do similarly to do so.
dang 7y ago
This is actually something the site guidelines ask you not to do. Would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html HN is a community. It's totally fine not to use your real name, but users do need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  We all really appreciate the work you do here.

I always make a fresh new throwaway account here every time I make a post, and,so, by this post you can deduce yourself. This is a zero-minute account, as all my accounts are. You're welcome.

nkurz 7y ago

I wish you wouldn't do that, as I think it's destructive to the community. Certainly things aren't perfect here, but certainly they could become worse. Violating the (difficult to enforce) rule that one maintain an "identity that others can relate to" contributes to making things worse.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
I think anonymity per se is not that bad, and I'm pretty sure many regularly create throwaway accounts for harmless discussion on many forums just for privacy reasons (avoid profiling & analysis, big brother, personal attacks, etc), not for posting inflammatory or controversial comments. Websites like Reddit Profile (https://redditprofile.com/about https://redditprofile.com/about) and HN Profile (https://hnprofile.com https://hnprofile.com) systematically scans all HN comments and identifies all users' expertise, personal interests, activities and emotions, and allow employers to uncover their E-mails and hire them. And it's just a one-man's startup as a social experiment, larger agencies and corporations have at least many order-of-magnitude higher budgets. And I definitely think not everyone wants that. The problem, I think, is this type of behavior encourages inappropriate uses and abuses of anonymity.

dredmorbius 7y ago

FYI: that's explicitly discouraged. You're welcome to create throwaways where appropriate. But in doing what you're doing, you're very likely making it more difficult for those with a legitimate need to do similarly to do so.

dang 7y ago

This is actually something the site guidelines ask you not to do. Would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html HN is a community. It's totally fine not to use your real name, but users do need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

throwaway5752 7y ago
We all really appreciate the work you do here.