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Comment by TheDong | Hacker News Reader

This isn't universally true.

My contributions to Stack Overflow have all been done anonymously, and I haven't ever felt even the slightest bit of desire to link that identity to my real one, add it to my resume, brag to friends.

Having and sharing knowledge to me is its own reward, and I have no intention of profiting from it in any way.

Your own personal way of thinking about the world shines through when you search for ulterior motivations and state as fact that those factors, like a desire for fame or money, must be present.

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I understand the perspective and generally have the same stance. But, a subtlety is that you know that "user425712" (made up) is you, and you can see your contributions being upvoted, quoted, discussed, your overall karma increase, etc.

Given that, as a thought experiment, would you be OK with your answers/comments being attributed to others, or that once you've submitted them, there is no linkage to you at all (e.g. you can't even know what you submitted)? Would it be as satisfying of a process if your contributions are just dissolved into a soup of other data irreversibly?

That doesn't sound like a system I'd be as keen to contribute to. Maybe the ulterior motive is at least being able to find my body of work as a source of personal fulfillment. Where is my work in the various LLMs? I have no idea, and will likely never know.

> Given that, as a thought experiment, would you be OK with your answers/comments being attributed to others, or that once you've submitted them, there is no linkage to you at all? Would it be as satisfying of a process if your contributions are just dissolved into a soup of other data irreversibly?

Yes. Wikipedia _almost_ operates like this. I have no expectations of anyone digging into who wrote what, it turns into a soup of information. I still do know I contributed, but I don't care if what I wrote gets rewritten, replaced, improved.

4chan does operate like this, and back in the days that /prog/ had meaningful discussions, I enjoyed participating in threads there.

Let me thank you for your contribution.

I have spent the last year in a new area (sql) and I've written a lot of questions to LLMs, which it gas been able to answer well enough for me to make speedy progress.

I'm a big fan of StackOverflow, and Google, and before that reference books to gather and learn.

Each technology builds on the layer before. Information is disseminated, repackaged, reauthored.

I get that some people feel like their contribution should be the end of the line. Despite perhaps that they got that knowledge from somewhere. Do they credit their college professor when posting on Reddit?

So again, thank you for your contribution. Your willingness to answer questions, and the answers you provided, will exist long after you and I do not.

I tip my hat.

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