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Re:Usenet – Let's Return to Public Spaces by dexen on Thursday February 13, 2020 @11:10AM (#22318805)
>The only way

Way to start with a false premise. The main way on HN is efforts, both by mods and by users, to buoy up good content, and push down bad content.

>[is to] remove some of the anonymity

Not even close. Preventing cheap creation of new identities isn't inherently tied to identification of users; there already deployed alternatives.

One example, TeamSpeak uses proof of work - a computational process that's expensive to perform and cheap to verify - to protect identity creation. Works wonders, and allows anonymity just fine.

At any rate, the thrust of my argument is different, and cuts deeper into your idea:

any automated process, any guaranteed outcome, will be subverted and put to bad ends. To grow & maintain a good community you need active management by intelligent agents (ordinarily, people). And not just by selected mods - it helps when typical user is well aware what is up and able to fend for himself.

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