One thing I dislike about public debates (outside of LW) is when I make a statement other people disagree with, and some of them keep bringing it up repeatedly later, in completely unrelated topics. My most extreme experience of this: on some website I once criticized a politician for doing something controversial, and one of his fans kept stalking me for a few months, and whenever I posted an unrelated article, he always posted a comment saying “hey, you are the guy who said that the politician X did a bad thing, but you are completely wrong!”. (And I was like: “dude, how exactly is this relevant to my Gimp tutorial? can’t we just keep the discussion on-topic?”. Unfortunately, there was no way for me to remove comments, and the admins refused to classify this as a spam.)
Similarly, since I’ve posted a few LW links on Facebook, some people start to prefix their disagreements with me by: “If you call yourself a rationalist, you shouldn’t believe X.” (They refuse my offers to make bets about X, though. They just believe that it is inappropriate for a rational person to disagree with them. And no, I don’t call myself a rationalist in such situations.)
So it feels like if you try to keep your identity small, you better register a separate nick for each article you post. Which of course would be too inconvenient. (Or maybe a nick per topic. Or rather, per opinion.)
One thing I dislike about public debates (outside of LW) is when I make a statement other people disagree with, and some of them keep bringing it up repeatedly later, in completely unrelated topics. My most extreme experience of this: on some website I once criticized a politician for doing something controversial, and one of his fans kept stalking me for a few months, and whenever I posted an unrelated article, he always posted a comment saying “hey, you are the guy who said that the politician X did a bad thing, but you are completely wrong!”. (And I was like: “dude, how exactly is this relevant to my Gimp tutorial? can’t we just keep the discussion on-topic?”. Unfortunately, there was no way for me to remove comments, and the admins refused to classify this as a spam.)
Similarly, since I’ve posted a few LW links on Facebook, some people start to prefix their disagreements with me by: “If you call yourself a rationalist, you shouldn’t believe X.” (They refuse my offers to make bets about X, though. They just believe that it is inappropriate for a rational person to disagree with them. And no, I don’t call myself a rationalist in such situations.)
So it feels like if you try to keep your identity small, you better register a separate nick for each article you post. Which of course would be too inconvenient. (Or maybe a nick per topic. Or rather, per opinion.)