haymakel

There is a vastness of comments about the name. They all must be written by trolls.

I think you might just be trolling, but in case you are not, I do not see how selection bias applies here. I (or anyone else) did not select any comments here. Close, or maybe even actual, 100% of the comments here are about the issue with the name, so unless you want to insinuate that the HN community responding to this is not in any way representative of people who care about filesystems, there is hardly a bias here.

The fact that every single thread here, possibly every single comment, is so far referring to the name of the filesystem, speaks louder to me than your anecdote. (It's very hard, for me at least, to say that in a way that does not come across as snarky, which I don't intend to be.)

You can try rationalizing, but the name immediately raises very unfavorable emotions and associations.

The very first thing I thought about when I saw the headline was Hans Reiser's crime. The first thing I then expected in the comments was a lengthy discussion about that. I am fairly certain that this is fully in line with how most people react.

I don't see how your proposed hypothetical following a name change would take hold. I don't think a name change would be perceived as "concealing", just understandably moving away from a name that has become unfortunate. I think people are more surprised that they haven't.