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Comment by sama | Hacker News Reader

this is from a newly-created troll account from a dorm in the netherlands. please go back to 4chan.

Hi there. Female Programmer here. Long time reader, long time anonymous poster who's cycled through many a throwaway account. Anonymity and throwaways enabling freedom of discourse are important to me: as a woman, being identified in what is honestly a very insular industry is not something I want to fear when posting about my hobby & profession online. I know that I'm not alone in those feelings: there is a reason our community tends to rally behind those fighting Real Name Policies and doxxing. HN has, I thought, always been a relatively safe space for all.

Sama: what you've just done, in your post above, will now drive me, and others like me, off HN. You might say, "fine, good riddance" - and that would just be sad. Whether or not a poster is a "troll" account should not grant the right to disclose any identifying information about that person, in a public space, to whoever wields the largest hammer. I may not agree with GP, but I certainly defend his right to anonymity, as the only way to guarantee my own.

Someone below said that it shouldn't matter, because the "troll" could be posting from behind a proxy for all we know: so I suppose that means that, in order to maintain any sense of security from power-wielding HNers, I can only post from behind a proxy myself. Otherwise I'm explicitly opting-in to public identification, any time a mod disagrees with my opinions on NodeJS or Linux vs MacOS. Noted.

While the GP comment is completely inappropriate, I also think it's inappropriate for you to use your power to dox the trolls. Can't their comment stand on it's own demerits and downvotes?

There is no "doxing" rule on HN. That, too, is a Redditism.

With people like Kathy Sierra pushed off Twitter, Kevin Mitnick threatening the job of a woman who stood up for her... And the high-profile guy who previously attacked Kathy coming out as a Nazi... Such harassers should be dealt with aggressively. (Deleted ASAP would be great.)

That's kinda funny of you mentioning the “high-profile guy”, because he wrote the following post not long ago, which mentions some lesser known women in tech than this article does:

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2hoffe/weev_stop_bash...

>And the high-profile guy who previously attacked Kathy coming out as a Nazi

I think he just said that to try to damage the reputation of nazis by association with him.

How is Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?" harassment?

Seems like providing personal information of an individual who thought they were anonymous, and merely expressed an opinion, is more like harassment.

oh geez, "Somebody in Netherlands" is far from doxing. And that Somebody could be using a proxy. So all we know is that this person is human and located on earth... maybe.

EDIT: Sama or Dang should should just delete this whole thread. It's going to become a big irrelevant sideshow. It's already the longest thread here.

How is The Netherlands even relevant? Are Dutch people particularly troll-ish?

I read it as "you're not as anonymous as you think you are, troll."

Well everyone here is as anonymous as they choose to be, apart from being outed by mods. Given that mods can ban any person with a click, I don't see any excuse for them punishing people by selectively providing their personal information.

The original post was >Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?

Is this really the sort of thing that warrants violating a persons privacy over? If we are going to use "name and shame" surely it should be for things that are manifestly abusive, not expressing an opinion.

At least he capitalizes.

What's this? Someone disagreeing with me? On HN? THIS WILL NOT STAND!

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