HN should just let you post under Anonymous Coward. It would save so many people the trouble.
Sorry. Next time.
You don't want this becoming 4chan. Anonymous posting might not be the best idea.
There's little practical difference between anonymous accounts and pseudonymous accounts in cases like this.
There's an increased cost (the time and effort required to make such a post) which deters it's casual use.
You're right, but that increased cost is minimal, and one many people seem willing to pay. I've seen green troll accounts pop up like weeds in many controversial threads. They're easy to spot because most of the time the usernames are thematically linked to the persona or the thread they're created for. Casual use doesn't seem to be deterred.
Trolls exist, but hacker news is no 4chan. I think it's enough of a deterrent to keep atmosphere generally constructive, while not eliminating all low-quality posts.
You're merely deluding yourself into thinking that some stupid voting system can eliminate low-quality posts. Using it to give higher voted posts more visibility is okay but thinking that these magic points are representative of quality is a stretch.
As counter-evidence, I point out that neither reddit nor hackernews is anywhere near as bad as 4chan.
The increased cost is not only minimal. It's actually nonexistend compared to a site like 4chan. You have to fill in a captcha for every post. Here you only have to fill a captcha on account creation.
Are you sure? I create a new account for every post I do after being "burned".
Ironically it's harder to abuse anonymity in /pol/ than on reddit or HN.
I wonder what the original leak looks like... Whether it would be as mineable as the Ashley Maddison leak, or whether you'd have to burrow down into each and investigate manually.
It's suspicious that North America is missing from this leak. Interesting timing given the election.