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It was only intended to solve one of the problems, as the other 'problem' is exactly what removing the names would seek to address: a person's authority/history influencing the weight of their comments within a thread. It'd really benefit people who've earned a negative following, but I don't see such a mob mentality on here as opposed to certain aggregators in which biases become apparent in just a few threads.

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Yes, but sometimes a person's authority is actually relevant. Consider this short exchange from the other day: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841887

On the other hand, when somebody who is deeply respected (be it pg, or any prolific high-karma commenter) posts on something where they have no particular expertise the comment shouldn't get special consideration due to the author.

I can't think of a way to reconcile these, and there's enough people who post here that are actual authorities in relevant areas that I wouldn't want to give up the first. Being able to know that, say, a comment about security was written by tptacek matters more to me than "oh look, pg made a two-word post that got 9001 points".

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