It isn't a question of karma, but of community, which you omitted to consider.

The suggestion has come up over the years that HN should just have comments without usernames. The answer is that that would be a fundamentally different site, so we're not going to do it. If that's what you prefer, you're welcome to start such a site, but please don't gnaw at the foundations of this one.

This has been on my mind because I think it's time for HN to go through a fresh round of defining what it is and what it isn't, and the above is one thing it isn't.

What do you suggest for people who need to post stories where the lack of anonymity could have serious ramifications for their lives? This is a serious question. Are those people (or those contributions) simply not intended to be a part of this community?

I didn't get from dang that HN is going to require Facebook auth or anything else to make it more difficult to create pseudonymous accounts. Dang simply discourages creating unnecessary new pseudonyms because the community benefits with consistent pseudonyms. If you need a new pseudonym to protect your identity, that's a necessary pseudonym: have at it.

Some people create pseudonyms as a platform for trolling or propagandizing without risking their main account, other people simply morally object to having a consistent online identity on principle, or want to say something controversial or confidential to protect their main account or identity. In every case, the pseudonym is an attempt to protect one's identity, and the person making it considers it necessary.

The first two cases are at odds with the interests of the community and ought to be discouraged.

They are usually discouraged, downvoted and flagged as they should be. But that happens with established accounts as well, so the anonymity itself doesn't seem to be the problem in those cases. Unless your account links to your real world identity in some way, there isn't much value in having an established account at all.

The corpus of postings by any consistenly used pseudonymous account can probably be fingerprinted and linked to a real-world identity if someone cared enough.

E.e. google probably could do it as they have every comment on this site and also have all of your email.

That's no problem. Sometimes people have legit reasons for making a throwaway account. For example, they might want to post about experiences that could get them in trouble if they used their real name or even their main pseudonym. All that is fine, and long established on HN.

But it's an abuse to make a new account for every few comments, and it's an abuse to rack up a stockpile of burner accounts.

Thanks for the clarification!

Maybe they (HN) could allow one BugMeNot-style account that is known not to belong to anyone, has aggressive anti-spam filtering, maybe requires a captcha to post, and only posts dead comments? Then when people who really don't want to join the community have something useful to contribute we can vouch for the individual comments. I guess this would be a tiny bit like the old sites with the Anonymous Coward "username".

> I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name.

The points displayed next to your name are on a per-comment level though. Changing accounts doesn't affect anything about that. I've literally never clicked through to see anyone's total karma count until I just tried it for you. I think you're overestimating how much people care about any of this, and thus over-compensating in your response to it by constantly creating new accounts.

There are justifications for anonymity and 2chan and 4chan originally stated that was their goal, that you should be judged by the contents and not by who you are. But as 4chan has shown when most people are anonymous, they default to trolling and junk posting. Theres no real reason to ever think out your arguments or locate facts because there are zero consequences for you if you're wrong and even if you thoroughly dismantle someone else's argument they can simply start posting somewhere else with the same nonsense because people can't just go back and look at their history and copy and paste the replies to their junk arguments.

When someone has a reputation of any kind to protect they tend to try to reply somewhat intelligently. This site makes it pretty easy to create accounts for when you need to be anonymous, but in the vast majority of cases you don't need to be. This community self-moderates pretty well so even someone with a high reputation can be replied to with a well thought out counter argument and not be downvoted simply for disagreeing

> I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name.

It is not up to you how other people judge you, no matter your preference, and attempting to make them is abusive behavior.

> It allows for much more honesty and sincerity in discussions, and I think those are two qualities that HN could use more of.

It doesn't actually, absent names, people become vile. Anonymous comments aren't more honest and sincere, they're more petty and flippant.