3 ms·

I had to look up all the people you named and am still not clear who they are or why you know them exactly.

• ponker 6y ago
  I don’t, I just recognize them as commenters and can tie their comments into their previous comments.
  • irrational 6y ago
    That might be one difference. I read comments, but not who wrote them. I don't even know who I am replying to right now ;-) It is like shouting into the dark.
    • dmurray 6y ago
      HN de-emphasises the handle of the commenter (smaller font, lighter text). No doubt that was an intentional decision, but I wonder just to what extent the original designer (pg?) expected it would influence the discussions. Reddit emphasises them a bit more than HN, but still the natural reading flow is such that you miss the username. It's common for someone to comment, a second poster to reply asking a question, and a third poster to reply without people noticing he's different from the first poster. Facebook emphasises the commenter more, showing their name in bolder text and a profile picture. Some older forums (on phpBB, vBulletin, etc) emphasised it even more, devoting a large section to the left of each post to the commenter's name, statistics and often an avatar. These forums were much more prone to cults of personality than the likes of Reddit. On the other end of the spectrum is 4chan, where posts are anonymous and content, or at least memes, is king. It doesn't seem like that necessarily leads to more nuanced discussion.