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Comment by mqzaidi | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the conclusion is correct. First, I have seen mails from Pakistani, Iranian and North Korean scammers as well.

I think the hackers challenge is to present a story that is credible enough. Claiming to be from a country that is perceived to be mismanaged and corrupt by the target audience helps. Linking it to some real event such as some real coup makes it even more credible. But finally, once someone gullible enough follows up - if you have a nigerian accent or ask them to mail to a nigerian account, claiming to be from some other place will make maintaining that credibility very difficult. I believe that is primarily why nigerian scammers pretend to be Nigerian, and Iranian scammers pretend to be Iranian.

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http://thobbs.github.com/blog/2012/06/17/you-should-downvote...

If you want to downvote it, go ahead, use whatever reasoning pleases you. But please be careful about quoting a post calling on others to downvote. Campaigning for upvotes or downvotes is frowned upon, it breaks the entire premise of "The wisdom of the HN crowd."

If you feel this person's anecdote is not helpful, it miht be better to reason against it directly rather than engaging in meta-debate. You risk re-opening a debate about that post rather than the current topoc.

The original article ("Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?") does not contradict what the grandparent writes.

Let X = claim to be Nigerian, and Y = earn money using a "419" scam.

The article says that while it may appear foolish to do X if you want Y, an economic argument shows that doing X in fact leads to more Y.

The scientific or analytical part of the article is solely the part about X leading to more Y.

The author then conjectures that Nigerians must continue claiming to be Nigerian because they have somehow come to realize that it is good for business.

The grandparent's conjecture is that Nigerians continue claiming to be Nigerian simply because they still expect the money to be deposited into a Nigerian account, they still speak with a Nigerian accent, etc.

Both are reasonable conjectures, and analytical part of the article is consistent with either one.

The bulk of the reply was reasoned argument rather than anecdote, and the anecdote didn't even contradict research in the paper, they were explaining why scammers might claim to be from Nigeria, not claiming that most scammers were claiming to be from Nigeria.

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