Why? So people can randomly ping him? So internet detectives can hunt him down and lynch him? He has the right to say what he wants to and be it anonymous or not. So now that he's said it, be the bigger person and just move on.
I don't want people to go out and lynch him, but this is not a case where anonymity is important. If that person is willing to post a question like this, they should at least be willing to be identified.
I realize that online anonymity is an important issue for many people, but I don't believe that it's a fundamental right. Forums like this one are public and I think that anonymity is a mistake because it allows trolling and a general falling away of normal behaviours that would be present if people were identified.
Now, I'm not saying that people don't have a right to privacy. You'll note that I don't talk about private issues on my blog (such as my family) and I think those are irrelevant to my interaction in a forum like this. But I'm much happier when people identify themselves so that I can follow them over time.
There are good arguments for being able to be anonymous on the net (for example in the case of human rights abuses in countries it may be useful to be able to transmit information anonymously; or if we implement voting on the net). I don't think those arguments apply in a public discussion forum like this.
Of course, I'm probably an outlier on this, I'd expect a group of engineers to be fairly pro-anonymity.
This is an interesting debate. I do believe that anonymity, especially in a public forum like this, should be a fundamental right on the internet. I know this can cause problems with "trolling" and abuse of the system, but in a community this small, that seems like a reasonable tradeoff.
I've noticed that a surprising number of people live two lives-- one on the internet and one in person. I can respect a decision to live like that, even if the behaviors differ between the online and offline lives, even if the two lives are separate. Now, I don't exactly condone this behavior, but I think anyone should have the right to do it. Forcing everyone to forgo anonymity prevents some people from doing that, because it fuses the online and offline lives.
The guy in question neither has a good image or a bad image in my mind, so the post didn't hurt or help him one way or another in my eyes. I'm not much on cults of personality.
But I can certainly understand where somebody has a public image that can be damaged by some random poster, so I'm with pg to some extent. I think a better question would be about this whole hero worship idea in general. Guys like Woz are great hackers, no doubt about it. But are they really worth the elevated platform many of us put them on? I don't think so. I don't read pg essays because hey, it's another pg essay! I read some of them because they were helpful.
So I can understand the frustration many people feel when it looks like they are being sold on reading blog material simply because of the hype surrounding somebody's name. Quite frankly, I find that useless to me personally. So make the comment about _that_, and not some particular person.
The interesting undercurrent in this discussion is that the technical world is very much a reputation, name-dropping, hero worship kind of place. As much as we all understand the importance of finding and servicing users in our startups, let's be honest: teams are going to get rewarded by both the investment community and the marketplace based on PR factors. That makes an attack like this one even worse, cause it hits somebody right in the pocketbook.
Despite the tone of your message you are the first person to actually give me a good reason not to sign my messages. Here and on Reddit people have objected to me signing my messages (which is odd because for _years_ I signed like that on /. without a peep) without any real justification.
Your argument that I'm wasting vertical space makes a lot of sense, especially given the clean look of reddit/news.yc compared with /.
What annoys me is not the wasted space, though. It's the principle of it. You're imparting information in the readers of your comments that has no other purpose than to serve your ego. When I read a comment, I only look at who wrote it when the comment is something special. But you force me to know that John wrote it. Why? Do you think you deserve a special place in my (and everyone else's) mind?
But that would be fine, if you didn't try to pass off your personality defect as an ideology for everyone to follow, as you did in this thread. That was what sent me over the edge.
There's a distinction between me signing messages and me not being anonymous. My lack of anonymity is guaranteed by the user name I chose plus the fact that my profile links back to my personal web site.
Signing messages was unrelated to anonymity, it's a years old habit that I started on Usenet and continued in online forums like this one. I don't claim that signing messages is part of the ideology I was talking about above. If I did I wouldn't have stopped.
It amuses me that you choose to describe it as a 'personality defect' from behind an anonymous account here. If we were standing face to face would you describe me signing messages in that way?
No, I probably wouldn't, and our discourse would be poorer for it. Anonymity guarantees honesty and impartiality. Face to face, why would I want to make an enemy out of you, when I could make a useful acquaintance? It's not like I get paid for pointing out the truth.
>but this is not a case where anonymity is important.
How do you figure? There are enough people who like Swartz and have pull in the Web 2.0 world that a post like this could really hurt your career.
Personally, I think it would have been better if had been done in a less vicious way and not done it anonymously, or just not posted it on the internet, but now that it's done I think he(?) has very valid reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
I agree so this person hides behind anonymity so that he can throw out an insult. He could have posed his question in a much less aggressive manner and have posted non-anonymously.
And I don't agree that a post like that could really hurt your career. It's nonsense to think that being an asshole is going to ruin your career. There are plenty of total dicks out there (not saying that the original poster is one) who are successful. What matters is not that you are Web 2.0 and buddy-buddy with someone who's got a high profile blog, what matters is that you make a decent product.
Perhaps you could publish qwertyy's IP address.
John.