Hacker News Reader

Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

I think more sites should end anonymity. If you're too afraid own up to what you say online maybe you shouldn't be saying it in the first place. It'd be like an entire town full of people wearing ski masks- nobody would be held accountable for anything.

View on HN

Anonymity's protection of nonconformists is the reason cities are the source of progress and villages are not. It is the only way you will ever hear What You Can't Say (http://paulgraham.com/say.html) from anyone who isn't willing to wreck their life over it. Any forum that requires a True Name is a waste of time for anything beyond small talk. It's not worth it to try to catch a few griefers (who will work around it anyway).

By your logic we should all be over at 4chan to discuss startups and tech news. Hacker News is a perfect example of the good that can come from non-anonymity and 4chan is the perfect example as to why total anonymity will always lead to cesspools.

Hacker News isn't non-anonymous. If someone gives out their real name on HN it's because they want to.

There is no substantial difference between the level of anonymity of HN and that of 4chan as far as real life identity is concerned.

As noted, HN doesn't ask for your real name (and I would never write anything of substance if it did). Yet it doesn't decay to /b/ because pg included tools to promote signal vs. noise and sometimes even steps in to moderate, and because it still has a critical mass of people who want to maintain its tone. There are workable steps short of making people unemployable.

this doesn't make sense. the loss of privacy isn't worth a potential gain in the quality of discussion. look at any public group or announcement on facebook: lack of anonymity does not prevent people from being ignorant jackasses

Sure, but facebook is a very different model. Even if you'd like to be friends with people from your past you can ignore their future activity in a click or two.

When the quality of discussion tends to be so low, you don't risk much by trying to mix things up.

I just think people would be a lot more thoughtful if they had to own up to what they said.

It is also possible that a lot of people would hesitate to say what should be said for the very same reason

Reply on news.ycombinator.com