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> treat online accounts as throwaway wherever possible I don't need to know who you actually are, but over time interacting with other people here I've started
by jefftk 4y ago
> treat online accounts as throwaway wherever possible
I don't need to know who you actually are, but over time interacting with other people here I've started to get a feel for several hundred accounts. This makes HN more pleasant because I have some sense of what sort of person they are to talk with, and what is likely to go well or poorly. When there have been subreddits I was really into, I would start to get a sense for the more prolific commenters there too.
If I regularly attended some sort of social club and it was common for people to replace their faces I would find it frustrating as well.
- devnullbrain 4y agoIf I attended a social club and my comments from 10 years ago were permanently engraved on the walls, I'd be much less honest and open.
- hgsgm 4y agoYou can use alts and delete old comments.
- andybak 4y agoYeah. Let's delete old blogs and shut down the internet archive as well. Personally I value the web as a knowledge store that persists. Use a non-logged chat service if you want a transient medium.
- grapesurgeon 4y ago[dead]
- devnullbrain 4y agoThere's no deleting beyond a time limit on HN
- tough 4y agoyou can request to the admins if you really need to
- jefftk 4y agoChanging alts is a lot more pro-social than deleting your comments: with alt rotation your old writing is still available for others to learn from.
- khmii 4y agoThere is also the aspect of upvoting/downvoting that completely skews honest opinion. Instead of acting like a bullshit filter, upvote/downvote tends to act like a dog getting petted for echoing back a popular opinion to the group or the dog being scolded for echoing an unpopular opinion. Dogs like to get pats on the head and don't like being yelled at. It is really one of the dumbest ideas of the last 30 years. Total disregard for human behavior and total disregard for the truth considering how often the truth is an unpopular opinion at a specific moment in time. Throwaway accounts to me are a small protest to this ridiculous system.
- causi 4y agoInteresting. Here I am thinking one of the best things about HN is how the usernames being a lighter shade makes them easy to ignore entirely and focus only on what's being said instead of the speaker.
- darkerside 4y agoThat's what makes it so awesome when you start recognizing the same username on comments where you subconsciously bother to check the name because it was so interesting
- layer8 4y ago> check the name because [the comment] was so interesting I wonder how many people have that reflex. I usually only notice usernames when mentioned by others.
- pohl 4y agoI would hope most people. I can't imagine being so incurious that I'd read an awesome comment and not wonder who wrote it.
- layer8 4y agoWhy should it matter who wrote it?
- jefftk 4y agoOne big reason I care about who wrote things is expertise. Ex: I've consistently seen informed and sensible security-related commentary from tptacek, so I would pay more attention to security-related advice with his name on it than if it was a name I didn't recognize.
- moremetadata 4y ago[flagged]
- webdoodle 4y agoOf course Reddit lets is political allies doxx and harass Reddit's political enemies without reservation, so this will likely affect those accounts more so.