I think the point here is that a witch hunt is never ok. In some of the situations you listed, people are asking for help in finding someone who wronged them.

I think the point here is that a witch hunt is never ok. In some of the situations you listed, people are asking for help in finding someone who wronged them. In this case the wronged party were not asking for help and it was offered up freely. I think that the idea of reddit finding peoples stolen bikes, phones, etc is typically less of an issue because of the scope of it. In this case the driving factor was fear and anger, much like what happened after 911. The point as I see it is that you should never hunt for someone to blame out of fear or anger. And you are right many people did it, Steven Colbert had an awesome skit making fun of the Post. But here, HN is our community and to see that kind of behavior happen here is disappointing. I'd like to see a policy enacted where posts like that are brought down in the future and not allowed to go on. Witch hunts are a major problem with this means of communication, it just lends itself well to it, and it needs to be stamped out. That's the point.