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Comment by Tinyyy | Hacker News Reader

I’m not trying to dox the author, but I just want to point out that he blogged about his own name on SCC(in 2019 no less), which is quite counterproductive if he wanted his last name private.

https://archive.vn/d9HrI

Edit: The linked blog post was still live prior to the site takedown, so I’m assuming it’s acceptable to link to an archive of it.

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You can easily find Scott's last name in multiple places. He makes a point though, being able to dig out his last name is very different from publishing it in the New York Times.

He was also concerned about people finding his blog starting from his name, mostly for reasons having to do with his work. He even mentions this in his post. People are saying that he didn't do a good job of protecting his privacy anyway - that's quite wrong, dude knows what he's doing.

> being able to dig out his last name is very different from publishing it in the New York Times

It's on Wikipedia. How's that "digging out"?

I can't see it on Wikipedia. Do you have a link?

While I think it's complete bogus, I will respect the author's demand of staying pseudonymous and not post a direct link. But check the history of a certain article if you really need to look it up.

Going through the history of an article counts as digging, and saying that's "on Wikipedia" is pretty misleading.

By your definition getting anything from a git repository that's not the main branch is digging and saying "it's on git" to a specific branch or tag would be misleading.

The article history of any article is literally available with just one click on Wikipedia. Well, make that two to show a specific version. Getting to the article itself takes more clicks and key presses than that ... so reading Wikipedia at all counts as digging already?

Surely you know that's a strawman. You can do better.

How is it a strawman? The whole concept of Wikipedia revolves around versioning.

Isn't "digging" exactly what a good journalist is supposed to do?

Journalism is not digging for the sake of digging, it's digging for the sake of a story. Revealing Scott's name is not for the sake of a story, it's for the sake of enabling harassment.

I would delete it. He deleted his posts. His name was protected through security by obscurity. A weak defense, but it had been enough so far.

Highlighting a way people can find the name encourages others to dig.

I honestly don't even share what seems to be the majority opinion in the thread. If someone runs a public blog of the size that SSC has, which is not small by any means, and has previously partaken in real world events and his name has already come up I don't think one can argue that there is reasonably expectation of pseudonimity in that regard.

It's not acceptable. You should respect the author and his fears and remove the link.

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