He probably can but doesn't want to. He may be posturing for whatever thing he wants to do next which requires being "very professional" (aka high-quality executive bullshit). Or he might just be boring as hell. My dad was an executive, and he was one of the most bland and uncreative human beings I've ever met.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I don't see the reply I made here with that throwaway (shadowban?), so I'm doing it with my other one.
> for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to
Apparently not! Using throwaways, people have upvoted me like crazy. Hundreds of points per month, for a person with no identity. If it kept going at the same pace, I would outrank some of the highest-point users within a year or two, all from using throwaway. Is that not community? And if it's not - isn't it better than community? Isn't upvoting someone you don't know, don't owe anything to, who you hold no preconceived ideas about, actually a more honest way to interact with a community?
When I get upvoted, I'm happy. Me being happy encourages me to post in a happy mood, so I create happier comments (on average). When I get downvoted or ignored (on my 'real' account), I get angry and depressed, and that makes for much less happy comments (and just a bad feeling all around). Using the throwaways not only makes me less angry and depressed, but it also enables creating content that people clearly approve of.
> Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community
There have been throwaways on this site for ages, in addition to known people. The community hasn't disappeared as far as I can tell. So it seems like you can, in fact, have it both ways. In addition, I've been a member of a lot of different communities. A lot of the time, the ones that banter on about how much of a close-knit community they are, enable some of the most toxic behavior. There are some great aspects to community, and some horrifying ones. Rather than trying to change the community to fit the standards we think it should have, perhaps we should encourage the behavior that metrics show have a more positive outcome. I could be crazy, but it seems like anything that inspires more upvotes (without the content being hateful, vitriolic, judgemental or divisive) seems like it's worth keeping.
Maybe I missed something, and there's some metrics-driven approach where you're pushing back on all throwaway behavior because its existence (regardless of content) leads to worse outcomes. Or maybe you just consider 'most' throwaways to post divisive content, and push back on all of them. Or maybe you just don't like the idea of throwaways, I dunno. All I know is this little experiment with throwaways has made me much happier on HN.
You can't judge these things by upvotes alone. Indignation and flamebait routinely get upvoted, for example, and are obviously not what this site is for. The system is complex and upvotes are just one factor.
As for 'the community not disappearing' - this is a freerider argument. You're benefitting from the contributions of all the people who aren't behaving this way.
So do you consider positive comments that get positive engagement to be a benefit to your community? If not, I get it, and your position is basically "I just don't like throwaways regardless of their contribution". But if that's not your position, you don't seem to have much of an argument yourself.
Also, there is no "freeriding" if the throwaways are actively producing positive content. You might as well call every single user a "freerider" - what are they contributing at all? Is your forum getting paid by someone based on an estimate of "real users" or something, and throwaways screw up your numbers? It really doesn't make sense.
The idea that a static username alone has an outsized positive effect on your community doesn't seem to be provable, in the face of accounts like mine. Maybe you're just making a general rule so you can eliminate the majority of accounts used for flaming or spam, I can't tell.
