1. The Mr. No guy was clearly well known for actions that involved no personal action but were publicly visible, e.g. commit messages. 2. Said problem was OOMs

1. The Mr. No guy was clearly well known for actions that involved no personal action but were publicly visible, e.g. commit messages. 2. Said problem was OOMs on machines with swapoff 3. Yup 4. It's pretty easy to get someone's measure from reputation if you have multiple independent sources - enough to fully distrust Mr. No's judgment. If this person is high enough in the chain that she's getting his orders second-hand, it also may not be very easy or fast to get his attention or a face-to-face meeting. So she made her change, publicly stated she was making it, and allowed him to countermand her (with a snarky "he can have my pager" to force him to justify his decision if he wanted to reverse the decision).