HN Explorer

Poll: Do you use your real identity on HN?

459 points by codegeek ↗ HN
Always wondered about this. Real identity means that you have your real name/contact info in your profile even if you username is generic

Please upvote the post as well for others to see if you can.

306 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 297 ms ] thread
minimaxir
That's the big differentiator between the communities HN and other aggregators, and that's a good thing. (Did SlashDot and Fark have as much emphasis on real names?)
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benjohnson
I use my real name as a way of keeping myself accountable as I've noticed that I'm much more inflammatory when under the guise of a pseudonym.
spitx
I do not think HN frowns on inflammatory speech if worded deftly.

If you are inflamed, your speech should be inflammatory.

Anything less will be intellectually dishonest.

loteck
If you are inflamed, your speech should be inflammatory.

No. Being inflammatory is by definition an attempt to cause others to become inflamed. Should those others also then reply with inflammatory speech? Where does it end? Value of the thread drops to zero rapidly.

I've appreciated my time on HN specifically because I notice many replies to "inflamed" speech specifically eschew further inflammation and focus on the mindful discussion. Bravo.

spitx
Malarkey.

Jobs would breathe fire when hes incensed or inflamed.

Furiousness is a skill that your kind cannot internalize.

It brings out the best when rightly meant and rightly utilized.

One has a right to be inflamed when his or her world view is called into question.

The mediocre just acquiesce, the impassioned offer a caustic rebuttal.

Not some happy medium rejoinder that pleases all.

Suitov
>I've appreciated my time on HN specifically because I notice many replies to "inflamed" speech specifically eschew further inflammation and focus on the mindful discussion. Bravo.

I, too. It's almost like my IRL workplace, but with loads more techie clued-up people. And IRL, I very much enjoy working in a context in which there are very few alpha males, Insanity Wolves and Ayn Rand readers.

Now, personally, I do my best to be avoidant or calmly assertive when someone I meet annoys me, and I mentally file people who throw chest-beating tantrums under "giant baby" and avoid them on the assumption that instability implies unreliability and they wouldn't be pleasant to work with. Fundamental attribution error be damned, one blow-up is one too many for me to feel at ease around someone. So that tells you something about my personal definition of unacceptable behaviour, I suppose.

Torgo
I am not going to go so far as to say someday you will regret it, but in the end you can't control how other people use your words. A pseudonym is a defensive mechanism.
SeanLuke
I specifically do this as well. And I've done a bit of a test. While I only occasionally post under my real name on reddit, I always post under my real name on HN. And over the last year or more, it's been clear, to me at any rate, that I am much less of a jerk on HN.
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DanBC
Yes. It's pretty easy to find who I am.

I'm more polite on HN than I am in other places. I don't think that's because I use my real name. There are pseudonymous posters who are polite and real name users who are pretty rude.

rckclmbr
Your last name is really Beale-COCKs?

(heh, pseudonym...)

DanBC
Yes, really!

It plays havoc with the occasional email filter.

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jeena
On the internet I always use my pseudonym.
flavmartins
I use my online profile name for HN, you can always find and contact me on Twitter: @flavmartins.

If I have something to say, I say it and stand behind it.

darrenkopp
I use my real name because my pseudonym "crackie" that i use in gaming is usually "not allowed" as a username.
iamdann
I use my real name for everything.
notatoad
my real name isn't listed here, but my username is about as real as my identity gets online. my username here @gmail is my primary personal contact email that all my other addresses forward to, and although i don't list a name it would be easy to track back to my real name should anybody care enough to try. my username is a pseudonym, but it isn't a disposable one.
BruceIV
I'm in the same boat - I've been BruceIV nearly as long as I've been on the 'net, and it would be pretty trivial to find my actual name, location, etc. if anyone cared to look. I used to take more care to avoid links from BruceIV to my meatspace identity on the public Internet, but I don't care so much anymore.
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gdonelli
my github user name!
grumps
Ditto.

If I were to post something that I wouldn't want coming back on me, I'd use a throwaway.

In general, I'm rather snarky but that's just who I am and if someone doesn't like it they can stuff it.

stevejohnson
There are too many Steve Johnsons in the tech field, but I don't have a better pseudonym, so I try to make my real name count.
bjhoops1
As a Jones, I feel you. It is almost impossible to find a good username or email address that is not already taken. My wife was formerly a Kokernot, and is finding she can no longer command first.last@gmail.com.
codegeek
my username is obviously anonymous but i realized the power of open identity after coming on HN. Now you can see my real contact info. in there.
danso
Yes. The discussion on HN is always engaging and there's not much temptation or incentive to go off on a dumb trollish tangent as has been the case in other corners of the Internet. It's always nice to talk to people off of HN that I've met here, too.

edit: somewhat ironically, HN is a place where I'm least tempted to look up a user's bio during a discussion. Someone has to say something extremely outrageous/amazing before I click on their username and commit the "argument from authority" fallacy. Otherwise, I like to read the discussion without having any preconception of who the poster is.

anonymoushn
No, but it's pretty trivial to figure out who I am.
dangrossman
I use my real name as my username in discussion communities. Always have all the way back to my first AOL dialup username.
citricsquid
There's lots of value in being personally identifiable online, I was asked about writing a book last year, the person found me through someone that had seen my reddit comments and connected my person to my name, for that reason I always use my real identity when commenting online (unless there's a specific reason I need to be anonymous).
VMG
About 1% of the posts I write are mildly controversial and I'm sort of happy to know that my person is not associated with them. On the other hand, there are probably more posts that I want to be associated with.
epochwolf
Nope. I do all my online interaction as epochwolf.
flatline
For some reason I'm extremely hesitant to post things under my real name. I don't really care if people know my name on an individual basis (and it's not like I'm a high profile poster anyway), but I am squeamish about it generally, and feel too self-conscious to post anything if my name is associated directly with it. I've tried blogging under my real name and always went back and deleted everything, it caused me too much anxiety. I'm not like that at all in person. Are there others like me around here? I think it's the permanent nature of what goes online that bothers me about it - there is a freedom to pseudonymity that, when not abused, is quite wonderful.
sliverstorm
Same boat. I don't generally care on a case-by-case basis, but I don't like the idea of someone being able to trivially connect me to years of comment history. Always a chance I'll recant and regret something I said five years ago. Don't particularly want old mistakes or opinions I no longer hold to be on-tap.
bobsy
My opinions change regularly, I am sometimes enlightened, I sometimes have a change of heart. I don't post with my actual identity because of this.

I don't want a situation where someone stumbles onto an old post or where I played devil's advocate and I lose out as a result.

frenchy
That may be a wise decision, but it's sad that the world has to be like this.
bigiain
I kinda miss the old days of usenet, where I'd often post sarcasm or devil's advocate type comments with an

x-planation: Yes, this is sarcasm

type header.

Web forums generally don't have a way to attach metadata like that in a way that's not _normally_ seen, but is easily discoverable or demonstratable on a per-post basis.

The "Ha ha! I was only joking" defense is much more credible if you explicitly (but initially in a non-visible way) declared that up-front.

thejosh
That's what /s is for! :)
voltagex_
I never knew that! I wonder if Google/Deja kept the headers.
networked
You can do this with cryptographic hash functions. Here's how:

1. Write whatever "meta" comment you want to attach to your post and add some random characters at the end.

2. Calculate the MD5 or SHA-1 hash of that comment + random characters [1] and add it to the text of your post.

3. Save the comment + random characters to a text file somewhere for future use.

Should questions arise as to whether or not you were, e.g., being sarcastic you will be able to prove your intent by presenting the original comment and letting everyone verify its hash valve. As a downside you would also have to add random hashes to every non-sarcastic post of yours to prevent sarcastic posts from being quickly detected by the presence of hash values. However, if you do so consistently and post a lot I'd wager that people would soon stop noticing them.

This may or may not be an overkill for signalling sarcasm but I have seen a few users here on HN with MD5 (or was it SHA-1?) sums in their "about" fields. I can only assume those contain their real identity should they want to prove it.

[1] You can use, e.g., http://www.md5.cz/ for convenience.

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esolyt
On the other hand, you are depriving us from the opportunity to see how your characters keeps developing and how your opinions change over time, which is actually healthy.
loup-vaillant
Maybe we do have this opportunity. His pseudonym just need to be old enough.
PavlovsCat
My opinions change regularly, I am sometimes enlightened, I sometimes have a change of heart. I don't post with my actual identity because of this.

I edit freely because of this. I don't care if other people hold old stuff against me; that's just people communicating with ghosts in their head. If someone has a serious problem with something I said, let them openly talk with me about it, or be counted among the people I just cannot be bothered to care about.

As I like to tell people: even human history is a HUGE thing compared to my own life, not to mention the universe. If I am lucky, I have 80 years to think and talk about all of it, and nobody, no boss, no relative, no friend, no life partner, could ever matter so much to me that I could completely swallow that thinking and talking, just because it might offend them. If in doubt, burn the bridges, think and talk freely, that's my motto...

I closed a lot of doors for myself with that, but I like the integrity I traded them for, I would not change a thing. Looking back so far, I would say anyone that ever mattered, didn't run away from the first misunderstanding, and not few friendships began with arguing over something with a stranger. On the other hand, the people who got upset about random superficial things, I don't really miss. So what could be better than having a website that filters some of them out, before we waste too much time and energy on each other?

stfu
I've tried blogging under my real name and always went back and deleted everything, it caused me too much anxiety.

Same here. Burned already 2-3 blogs that way. Absolutely hate the idea of somebody judging me by my opinion from last year. Much easier to start from scratch and create a new first impression.

readme
That's why I disassociated my real name from my HN account. I realized I'd posted opinions using this account.

I own my .com and have some stuff on there. I tend not to post strong opinions under my real name anymore.

Though, there are a few things on the internet that might suggest my political views, you'd have to dig to find them.

cupcake-unicorn
That's me, as well. I think it's come from chronic Googling of Craigslist users that naively sent me emails under their real names, or even just searching by their emails, and I easily found information such as: one guy was listed in a court order with drug related gang violence, one guy had blog filled with info about his adventures "mail order bride-ing"...Some of the stuff was more embarrassing and less incriminating, but still. I've Googled people I've met before and been overly turned off by say, a small stupid youtube comment, or something like that.
devindotcom
I think the future will be one where we're split on this - not as a society, but individually. You will have your public persona and your private persona. I have to be public because I'm in news, but not everything I do has to be associated with my real name, and I take advantage of that when I feel like it. That ability and that habit will only become safer and more accepted over time.
svachalek
I wish various sites were more supportive of this. Back in the day, Yahoo! groups supported multiple identities very comfortably, so you could be "yourself" in professional forums and "be" yourself elsewhere. I don't know about anymore since I haven't used them in years. But most other sites that support pseudonyms mostly still work hard to make sure you only have one, which does little to curtail the possible abuses thereof while making it painful to do so for good reasons.
icebraining
I think we've always had multiple public and private personas. Many of us are not the exact same person around strangers than we are at home, or with friends. It's just that what's seamless and instinctive in physical space is often hard to translate into the 'net, and the big sites don't help at all.
sk00byd00
In the future everyone will be anonymous for fifteen minutes -- Banksy
yaddayadda
PhinisheD (http://www.phinished.org/) has done this for many years. You must have a user account to make posts, but if there are reasons to post anonymously, then you can do so by posting it as "AFT" - anonymous for this. Everyone has the same anonymous moniker, and it is clear when someone is posting anonymously.

I like this so approach so much that I've actually created AFT or numbered AFT accounts in several places where I don't want a regular username associated with the comment.

I also have themed usernames. Anything I post professionally goes with my real life name or a moniker known by my professional colleagues. I have several hobbies and several very different subjects that I'm trying to learn, and each of those have different associated usernames.

I thought that OpenID would support this concept, but it never seemed to (maybe I was missing some key concept?). Now I have hope that Mozilla Persona might fill this gap.

mnicole
Ditto. Deciding to use a variant of my name here was something I went back and forth on (partly because I didn't want it associated with me at all, partly because I didn't want it to be gendered [1]). Ultimately I decided that I wanted to be able to take credit for posts where I write about usability/design/anything else I feel qualified to speak to, even at the expense of potential employers reading the rest of what I write here. On the other side of the same coin, I don't put any personal information in my profile.

[1] One of, if not my very first, comment's first comment was someone using my gender to denounce my opinion, which had me trying to figure out if I should start fresh again. For the most part this only happens in gender issues threads (where sockpuppets and new accounts run rampant), but this particular one wasn't. I wasn't sure if that attitude was going to follow me throughout my time here, but I've found most people don't even look at my username (as evidenced by being referred to as "he" in child comments).

graue
> One of, if not my very first, comment's first comment was someone using my gender to denounce my opinion

That sucks. I hope they were downvoted into oblivion, but either way, I know that kind of thing happens on HN and I wish HN were better than that. I'm sorry that happened to you.

mnicole
Thanks. I'd spent a good chunk of time on the initial post itself, so I opted to just see what the community did instead of responding to it. Thankfully, it was downvoted quickly and two people responded to him directly about it.

In another post when I said I didn't want kids, I had about 5 replies insinuating I was risking my future happiness/purpose and I'd regret it in my later years. So.. there's still room to grow.

dpcan
That's me - only I'm like that in person too.
kamjam
Not too this level, but i use a pseudonym here. I don't generally post inflammatory stuff but I do like a good debate. But I use my real name on twitter and am very careful about what I post. I use my real name on Facebook, but I am not so worried about what I post, it's to a closed audience so i can vent and be negative without being looked down on.

In this day and age of Google, you're just a click away and a whole bunch about you has been discovered about you even before an interview. I'm not a big flying hot shot, just a developer. Who know what will happen in years to come and it's difficult to wipe that public footprint.

olivier1664
Yeah, me too: the alias is a protection against a simple google research.
SoftwareMaven
I understand where the feelings come from, but I'm not that way. On the other hand, there are times that I feel like I have to limit what I say. There are some details that are too personal or that impact people I care deeply about that I don't want to have tied that closely to my real identity.

For those cases, I consider how valuable what I have to say might be and, if it is truly worth it (not very often), I'll create a throw-away. Of course, it isn't going to stop anybody truly determined, but it makes it harder.

echohack
Pseudonymity is exactly right.
IanChiles
I feel much the same way, but go ahead and use my name in order to "force" myself to think a little bit more before posting on things, and I think it really helps the quality of my posts.
plainOldText
I agree. For some reason I feel exactly the same way.
ceras
I'm very much like this. I create a completely different handle on every site I use. I simply don't use a service if my real name is involved: for instance, I completely stopped reviewing Google Play Store apps ever since the G+ integration. Even having my name publicly associated with some random app that I've used makes me really uncomfortable. It isn't really rational or anything, but it's nevertheless present. I'm just a private person I guess.
trebor
I use a pseudonym derived from my first name, or whole name. Considering that even when open about my name I've been slammed for my beliefs, for disagreeing with someone (I was polite, so their response shocked me), and so on. I've done dumb stuff, smart stuff, etc.

I'm a fairly private person in person, but I'm far more open offline than I'll ever be online.

untog
Yes. I wish I could change my username, though- I used it on a whim when signing up for what I considered to be a dummy account at the time. Woops.
snprbob86
I too thought it was a dummy account & now really wish I could change my user name to be my real name. I don't really care about the Karma, but every time I've tried to create a new account & start over, I get an error about too many new users.
kaybe
This made me curious, so I tried myself.. and now there's a new account with your name. Ups. Check your email, I sent you the login information, it's yours. (Sorry.)
neogodless
I didn't really think about it, but the username I chose is one that I really try to use universally on any online community where I'm using a fictitious name, and is ultimately tied to who I am.
njharman
I almost never hide or lie about my identity in person. I don't view my online life as separate or different than in person life. So, I use my real name almost everywhere.