Hacker News Reader

Comment by knallfrosch | Hacker News Reader

If you edit a page about any Middle-East conflict, or gender - well you can expect at least one, if not both sides to hate you. Even if you were a perfectly rational and objective ideal editor.

View on HN

I've edited under a pseudonym since about 2015. I approach pages about the Middle East with trepidation; if I edited under my real name, I probably wouldn't edit at all. You'd think there were conflict-free topics, but I haven't found them.

~ Cooking: food nationalists are constantly claiming that Biryani belongs to their nation and nobody else's.

~ History: nationalists again, especially over Turkey, Cyprus, or anywhere in the Balkans.

~ Politicians: most articles about politicians are so bland as to be almost worthless, because anything interesting is quickly excised citing 'BLP' rules.

If I edited under my own name, I'd probably have to stick to articles about obscure botanical species, and places that nobody goes to.

I have no doubt those who worked on the US 2020 election page and pages like "Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election" would have death threats at the very least

And weird messages from people who track down your social media identity. Don't ask me how I know..

I’ve been using this account on HN since 2010. I created a new HN identity because reasons [1]. Some time after I had reaped a bit of karma, I was replying to someone who was being fairly emotional (and a but irrational) in their arguments. Someone else in the thread flagged their next reply. They thought I did the flagging, looked up the domain that matched the handle, found me on LinkedIn, and complained at me in DMs on LinkedIn. I was freaked out a little.

1 - this pseudonym has followed me through many places and it was time for a change

You'd be utterly shocked if you googled what the "Anvil email" is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com