Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Yes, absolutely. I think that unless you have something to say that can immediately hurt you when it is linked to your identity the general mode of conversation on the internet should be tied to your real world identity.

There are two reasons for that:

The first is that you will be aware that you're saying stuff on your personal title and that if you decide to go postal on someone that it will reflect bad on you in the longer term. Anonymity seems to bring out the worst in people.

The second is more subtle. When you say stuff attached to your name you're putting a calling card out there, people will remember the overall tone of your content and they'll build up a mental image of the person that goes with that content. Over time this will translate in to more concrete (for instance real-life or collaborative) relationships to grow out of the more casual online ones.

So reserve the anonymous stuff for the 'leaks' and the 'revelations', don't bother with the anonymous attacks and the trolling. And do the rest as you.

Ironically, I find myself self-censoring with a fake identity in HN more than in real life.

A few comments ago, I posted something (which netted me total, about -40 points) that I wouldn't have hesitated to say IRL. And I also posted it under my real name on Facebook (a friend posted the same article there.)

But I did hesitate to post it here. And there are many occasions when there are things I haven't said that I would in person.

And that's because unlike real life, how much you "downvote" is invisible. Downvoting someone else has no consequences for you. There are new HN controls (like you can't downvote responses to your posts) but that still is a blade of grass on a lawn.

In the real world, people might think less of you if you say something (some might consider) sexist, but they're not going to do anything to you at all. So you're protected from backlash. But when people are allowed to anonymously punish you, it makes you hesitate a bit more.

-40 is kinda harsh.

Did you murder a puppy and admit to it or something like that ?

I'm guessing it was this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1784086

I feel like downvoting it now. That kind of stuff just has no place in rational discourse.

If the poster wouldn't hesitate to say it in real life, that's because throwaway comments like that have no record and no real cost among your friends. A comment on HNN is there for a while, though, and visible to everyone. It's appropriate that it have a cost to say something really ... I want to say stupid. But inaccurate is maybe something better.

I went to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology back in medieval times when it was all-male. This attitude was pretty natural there at the time - we were an all-male top engineering college in the same town with ISU, a middling state university, and St. Mary-of-the-Woods, an all-female liberal arts college. Engineers tend to measure intelligence by skill with math and science, so naturally Rose's student body was, by our own measure, the smartest of the three.

One year, there was a talk by a Rose alum who had been Out There in the business world, giving advice to the not-yet-graduated. One thing he said stuck with me - he said that one of the hardest things facing Rose graduates was working with women. This is because they consistently underestimated them, and were then crushed, because women are not stupider than men. But there's nothing surer to provoke animosity in any coworker than underestimating them.

The problem with HN is that it shows comment rating as MAX(-4,commentRating). Some people are not aware of this and downvote the comment further, thinking that -4 is not good enough punishment for it. If they saw that the abusing comment had already accumulated 40 downvotes, maybe they wouldn't bury it further.

Yeah. This is a really stupid misfeature.

If I see one of my own comments at -4, I try to delete it before it does any more damage. It would be nice if the delete button lasted longer; sometimes your comment gets modded up quickly, and then goes down to -a billion. I guess I don't really care though :)

I think one of the problems (and it is not just localized to HN) is people mistake the downvote for, "I don't agree with you". I get downvoted all the time for my position on full client side browser apps. Which to me is the silliest thing to downvote someone for and it seem to be the big one. Not my position in general, but technical dogma in general. It is a form of group think and I think at a certain level it is inescapable.

For example, guy (A) like Apple guy (b) does not. Each provide their reasons and both are valid points as to why each holds their position, but many times that exchange will result in a third party that agrees with one downvoting the other. I don't understand why people equate "i don't agree" with "I need to downvote" but it happens and it leads to group think.

Given that, similar post receive higher scores while opposing views get suppressed, by the would be poster out of fear of reprisal or from downvoting. There are some key ones that are pretty common obviously Apple is a big one. NoSQL vs Relational is another. Anyway, this does make individuals second guess expressing there real opinion on a subject for fear of being downvoted.

If a system could be designed to identify someones bias and make the weight of their down votes and up votes count less for items they show a bias for, I think you could kill some of the group think and fear of reprisal. Also I think downvotes from a users page should be track with particular interest. I do not think it is rampent but I have seen instances where one user is targeting another user with downvotes by visiting their profile and downvoting their threads. I had it happen to me on two occasions one of them I pinpointed who it was because only the posts that the user had not replied to me had been downvoted, given that you can not downvote a post you replied to it was pretty obvious who had done it. Anyway, I think there are some ways that a system could be built to identify downmoderation abuse and weaken or remove those privileges.

For myself personally, I say what I think if it gets downvotes then so be it. If I get downvoted to oblivion guess what? The community just validated that it is not the right community for me and it is time to move on. Either there is too much group think or I just have nothing valuable to provide to that community, either way why would I want to hang around. So far most of you guys like me and I am thankful for that as I like HN and yes my real info is my profile and my user name is my initials.

On the other hand, your internal censor has a way of making things more constrained and mediocre. You probably eliminate a lot of the bad and trollish comments, but you probably also cut out a lot of the good comments.

(For the record, I use my real name as you can tell. But there are times where I've wished I could be anonymous and say what I really feel.)

This. I don't say anything even slightly controversial attached to my True Name unless I'm among only people I trust. For instance, I could never publicly level serious criticism at any technology without jeopardizing opportunities to take a job that happens to use it. Nor would I wear all my sociopolitical opinions on my sleeve before a potential landlord.

Allow me to add another reason: If you use your real identity frequently to post insightful and interesting commentary, then it will overshadow anything less seemly you may have posted under your real name at some other point in your life. This can come in handy when a potential partner or employer Googles your name.

Agreed. I do everything online under my real name. With that said, I see the option of using an anonymous account to be very important and I think the internet as a whole would be worse off if that option were somehow removed as some people want.

I absolutely agree. I do think this counts more for a community like HN than it does for something like (for instance) Something Awful.

If this is the worst in me, I think we're okay.

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