It seems like that there is a reason that names are tiny/gray: we should judge what is said on its merit, not based on who said it.

I've had the good fortune to know and work with some extremely smart people, and none of them is always right. How is it useful to be able to follow all of X's comments?

I've found that the moderation system here is fairly good at separating the wheat from the chaff. Far more so than identity is, at least.

The point here being that these people are notable for a reason. I expect to find disproportionately more useful/insightful comments from them on their subjects than from the average user, including myself.

Obsession with 'celebrity' is not healthy.

It depends, there are certain people whose opinion I respect more than others.

Tech celebrities are a bit different from regular celebrities. It's (usually) not about what they look like and I'm sure most people you ask wouldn't know who someone like Joel Spolsky was anyway. With nothing else to go by, I would respect Joel's opinion far more than someone I've never spoken to before.

If Bill Gates started commenting here, I'd certainly be paying attention. :)

Healthy or not, it's human.

So are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Saying "it's human" means "it's easy to do this," and is too often an excuse for not-so-excusable behavior.

I think inquiring about notable figures in the fields and industries in which many of us here find sustenance could hardly be considered 'not-so-excusable'. Branding said inquirers as fanboys seems pretty inexcusable to me.

Owen Byrne - Digg co-founder: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ojbyrne

Marc Andreessen - Netcape/Opsware/Ning (appears dormant) http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pmarca

Aaron Swartz http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=aaronsw

And you never know who is lurking.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dhh (although apparently now dormant)

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jzawodny (relatively new addition)

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg (hehe)

I really like the idea that "notable" people may be lurking here. If only for the reason that we should all think twice before degrading someone else (or generally acting like an idiot). You never know who you're really talking to or who else may be witnessing it.

(Imagine losing a 7 figure deal a year from now because the investor found out you insulted him here.)

You shouldn't degrade other people on the Internet, even if they don't have 7 figure deals to revoke.

Right. But sometimes I'd settle for people doing the right thing even if it's for the wrong reason.

Everyone's definition of "notable" might vary a little, but:

Paul Buchheit: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=paul

I heard Paul Graham comes around sometimes.

He is here quite often actaully

Eliezer Yudkowsky.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=eyudkowsky

I would be willing to bet that just about every notable person in the startup/programming industry uses this site and may occasionally post comments.

I would also be willing to bet that only an extremely small subset of those notable users would publicly reveal themselves.

I'd like to point out that I disagree with the purpose of this article -- I want to take submitter's comments on their own merits. I don't care if you are Bill Gates or the janitor.

However -- and this is a "feature" of HackerNews -- I have to upvote it to keep it in my list, and I am curious to see the answers.

So count this as a forced upvote.Simply because I am curious about something should not make me upvote it. Geesh.

I'd like to do that, too. But there are many people with opinions. And many of those opinions are worthless. And many of the most interesting opinions sound worthless at first -- so I'd rather listen to what smart people say, knowing that if they sound crazy, it's probably because I'm dumb.

Fortunately, twitter's front page and the 'next blog' button on the Blogger bar can supply a pretty much infinite amount of random opinions from strangers. I would be interested in how informative that is.

I'm not sure how you ever get around making a personal decision whether some idea is worthwhile or not. Simply because a person had one startup, does that make them a startup expert? Probably not. If I publish a book on model trains, does that mean my opinion on world trade is somehow worthy of five minutes of your attention?

In fact, most of what people say -- even famous people -- is probably off-the-cuff and not exactly geared to your particular situation. Most all communication, in fact, is basically just chit-chat: obscure facts, disagreements based on partisanship instead of philosophy, pot shots at those out of power, praise for those in power, etc.

You can decide to listen to what "smart people" have to say, and that's probably a good idea. I'd just be really careful how I defined "smart people" -- it certainly isn't fame. In fact, I'd turn the equation around backward: I would judge the people to listen to based on their ability to have given me insight in the past, not their fame, fortune, or other crowd-based attribute.

But we're not talking about whether or not Paris Hilton reads HN. The people in question are startup founders, Putnam fellows, essayists, etc.

There are many streams of data. Most are (in my experience) not worth the effort. I mostly listen to people who have said interesting things in the past, and I mostly hear about them through other such people. I inject a little randomness into that process by reading old and obscure stuff, but that's more to view my ideological bubble from the outside than to get a high-quality data source.

So let me make sure I understand you correctly. It's more important to listen to famous people in this area (startups, Putnam, essayists) than it is to listen to more mundane people who have been proven to given you advice that was worthwhile to you personally?

I read all the time. I take college lectures on CD and DVD. I love reading HN. But I don't think any of that consumption was based on the celebrity status of a person inside the community. Rather it was based on the perceived future value to me. Projected future value, as best as I can figure, doesn't relate to "notable people" Bill Gates made billions, but if he posted here on his opinion of functional languages I would give him no more or less consideration than if you did. In fact, if you and I had talked about functional languages in the past and I found your comments useful, I'd be more inclined to hear what you had to say over Bill. "Bill Gates" or "PG" or whatever is just a concept we have of people we've never met. I think you'll find once you meet them that they have to prove themselves like the rest of us. Life is like that: what have you done lately?

I read commentary to kick my belief system around. Lots of great commentators out there. But I don't have heroes, and if one of my favorite commentators were to post here, who cares?

I'm probably missing something. Apologies if I'm off-base.

Joel Spolsky: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=spolsky

RTM, of course: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rtm

And though it'd be a stretch to call them notable, people I at least heard of before they came here:

Colin Perciva (FreeBSD security officer; Putnam winner): http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=cperciva

John Graham-Cummings (active in the anti-spam community; caused a firestorm when he submitted Reddit to Digg and got censored): http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jgrahamc

Doug Renert (partner at Tandem E.): http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=DougR

and I think ESR might lurk here occasionally.

I'm notable? <blushes>

congrats. You made it.

It's all downhill from here. : )

Great. When somebody puts me in this thread, I'll know I made it!

Is that really Steve Pavlina?

Jeremy Zawodny http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jzawodny

edw519 I do not know who he is outside of HN, but he sure is somebody here and I follow his comments/ http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=edw519. May I also add the one and only http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mattmaroon

Ed's an all around nice guy. We've met both online and in meat space at the last Startup School.

As much as I love this community, it's even better when you get a chance to meet your on-line friends in person.

After talking iamelgringo and Xichekolas for 30 seconds, I felt as if I knew them for years.

I enjoyed debating browsers and screen resolutions with dcurtis. No one ever wins a debate like that, you just laugh and have another beer.

I learned more about 27 new things from kirubakaran is 1 day than in the past year.

Of course, it's always cool to hang out with wizards like alaskamiller, chengmi, and rms.

dfranke is brilliant. He can discuss the pros and cons of 3rd and 4th normal form in one minute and laugh like Albert Einstein the next. I have a feeling there'll be threads like this about him before too long.

My advice to noobs: Make friends here. And find a way to meet them in person (Startup School or even something local). This is not your usual crowd. (We're all notable in some way.) And who knows, you may even make friends for life.

Eeeeeez. Meat space just sounds sooo wrong.

So can you confirm if he is PG or not? Just kidding ;)

I was in the room at the same time that PG and Ed were. I think that dcurtis and xichekolas were there chewing the fat with us at the same time.

And me as well.

I knew I was forgeting someone. Sorry.

In the words of a celebrity I once met, longtime Sports Illustrated writer and Pittsburgh Steelers commentator, Myron Cope,

"Notorious, yes. Famous, not so sure."

Anyone who ever had to maintain my code would probably agree.

(Aside: While I'm at it, a quick Myron Cope story...Myron noticed that Lee Flowers was coming off the disabled list with a high ankle sprain after only 2 weeks when the usual diagnosis was 4 weeks. He asked Coach Cowher why. Coach told him that the first high ankle sprain usually took 4 weeks to heal, but subseqent high ankle sprains only took 2 weeks to heal. This was Lee's second injury. Myron then asked, "Well then, why don't you take the whole team out in February and sprain all their ankles?")

mike arrington/techcrunch:

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=techcrunch

Is that really mike and/or techcrunch staff?

It's Mike.

It was actually an article by Mike a while back which pointed me here! Hes a big fan of the site by all accounts and am glad he pointed it out, its quickly become one of my first bookmarked visits every morning

Michael Whalen - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whalesalad

jokes.