Comment by krapp

There's no deep and profound reason why usernames are used on HN, other than usernames being a common idiom on forums.

Since I've been here, numerous extra links have been added to the comment headers (prev, next, context,) hiding comments was added, vouching was added making hellbanning reversible, thread folding was added, two new pages were added to the header, the repost pool was made public, submitted links now automatically search for canonical URLs and titles are automatically edited. And before that, user karma was made invisible in threads. And that's just the stuff I remember or noticed. And the site hasn't broken yet.

Removing usernames could break things, but I can think of a number of problems it could also improve. Even just generally reducing engagement and thread velocity across the board would increase quality in aggregate. At the very least, it might be worth beta testing. If it doesn't work it can always be reverted.