alt Hacker NewsIve wanted tp poll HN about how many people actively track usernames.
With IRC its basically part of the task, but every forum i read, its rare that i ever consider whose saying what.
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I use this script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441566-hn-avatars-in-396-b...
Doesn't really help a ton with recognizing but it makes it easier to track within a thread.
I routinely notice a handful of people, such as Thomas Ptacek, whose opinions I have opinions about, and then in context I notice e.g. Martin Uecker for C and especially the pointer provenance problem (on which he has been diligently working for some years), or Walter Bright (for the D language), or Steve Klabnik (Rust)
There are people who show up much less often and have less obvious usernames, Andrew Ayer is agwa for example, and I'm sure there are people I blank on entirely.
Once in a while I will read something and realise oh, that "coincidental" similarity of username probably isn't a coincidence, I believe the first time I realised it was Martin Uecker was like that for example. "Hey, this HN person who has strong opinions about the work by Uecker et al has the username... oh... Huh. I guess I should ask"
HN goes to some lengths to de-emphasize the usernames, leaving them small and medium grey against a light grey background. It's not easy to track usernames here. Some other forums put far more emphasis on them, even letting users upload icons so you can tell who is who at a glance.
For me it's more a recognition after the fact thing: "Oh that was a good comment who said that? Oh that guy, yeah not surprised."
I don’t even slightly.
Yep. Dang is basically the only one I notice.