Suggest HN: Anonymise usernames between threads

There's a pretty common problem of "hero-worship" that happens in many discussions on HN and in other communities. Various users tend to use the notoriety of their username as a club in discussion, and to be honest, act like pompous asses. Their opinions are held in higher regard, not because the words are thought out or relevant, but simply because people know who they are.

So my suggestion is fairly simple: for each thread, assign people a randomized hash for the conversation to show instead of a username. The hash persists for all their posts in that thread so that you can follow back-and-forth between users, and clicking on the hash will still take you to their user page, but the initial "this was said by XXXX, so it must be an important opinion" would be broken.

As the hash is still tied to the user account, hopefully people wouldn't start acting like they're fully anonymous (it's just a random, very thin mask, after all), but what they say won't be held in massively high regard just because of their username (instead of what they say actually being worthwhile).