It's funny you'd say that, because you're one of three-ish people on HN I weight equally with cperciva on security issues. But my explanation doesn't depend on his being one of the top 10 security guys in the world; just on his being orders of magnitude more reliable than an average Hacker News reader, like the one who I responded to.

Even that is more than required by the fundamental message I'd hoped to convey; which is "making something and sharing it can be useful; giving non-specific criticisms from a noncommitted, unassailable position is not useful." Reputation is simply bayesian evidence with which one can weight an otherwise-unsupported claim.