I think you are misunderstanding my use of the the phrase "identity-based". What I mean is that the primary entity around which conversation and content revol

I think you are misunderstanding my use of the the phrase "identity-based". What I mean is that the primary entity around which conversation and content revolve on HN is the topic (from URLs or questions), not the individual user's identity. Topic based forums are a thing. I'm a member of a paid (gasp!) forum for high-performance building methods.