You are effectively anonymous to me. (Granted: It is really pseudonymity.) I know nothing about you. I could check out your comment history to get a little bett

You are effectively anonymous to me. (Granted: It is really pseudonymity.) I know nothing about you. I could check out your comment history to get a little better idea of you as a person, but doing that for every single person whose comments interest me would be time consuming and probably would not provide much benefit. And yet, you've offered ideas here that I may not have considered on my own. I find value in that regardless of whether I ultimately agree, disagree, or choose not to consider it further. HN has a variety of comments, some excellent, some mindless, but most effectively anonymous. So I don't think I can agree that anonymity is the problem. Perhaps the problem is accountability. HN (and really, any comments section that is still worthwhile) has methods for punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior. Or maybe we are simply lucky enough to be small enough to not be that interesting to trolls.