> The notion that everyone is entitled to cooperative anonymity is a message board meme, not an actual norm of society ... I am allergic to the argument that, b

> The notion that everyone is entitled to cooperative anonymity is a message board meme, not an actual norm of society ... I am allergic to the argument that, because something is a norm on HN or Reddit, that norm binds on the rest of the world. Well, luckily, neither Scott nor any of the ancestor comments uses "it's a norm on message boards" as the sole justification for their position. Or, indeed, as justification at all, from what I can see—that seems to be an argument you brought in. Instead, they talk about the expected negative impacts of name-publishing: death threats, loss of professional opportunities (citing examples of what's happened to other people and to Scott himself in his earlier career), etc., while also saying there's no positive impact to name-publishing. In other words, they argue for the norm on its own merits. The NYT is free to say "Yeah, we'll cheerfully do this unnecessary net-negative-impact thing for no good reason we've been able to articulate", but they should suffer reputational costs for that. Even if—or especially if—that thing is standard operating procedure for them.