This is one of the few things that 4chan has right - by removing names, you take ego entirely out of the question.

Then, to avoid turning into 4chan, you can have posts be anonymous on the front end, but accountable to a user id on the back end only visible to the user themselves and the site staff.

It would be an interesting experiment.

But then it's nice to know you're at least talking to the same person over several comments. In 4chan you never really know, because anyone can claim to be op or to have written any other comment.

Poster ID's. A hash that's created based on your IP address and a seed that changes daily and per thread.

It stops people from claiming to be someone they're not, but I see your point about knowing who you're talking to.

A good idea but I think it would have to be random and blind where the poster didn't know when it would happen to them. Would take considerable work so most likely the admins would not go for it.

Perhaps a random anon on a comment here and there to test on a rolling basis.