The issue was debated to death when the initial story flared up, but the strongest counter-point I saw was this:
Publication of his name in a NYT feature would have made a huge difference to the awareness level of his identity, vs just being able to be sniffed out by determined online sleuths, and would have dramatically altered his identifiability with respect to his clients.
I can see it both ways and don't care to argue the topic any further, but this position deserves to be put.
I think it’s a bit dishonest for us to imply it would have taken a determined online sleuth — unless we now consider anyone who would have simply googled a name to be a determined sleuth.
I agree though, it’s kind of a silly thing to put much concern into. I’m done worrying about it as well lol.
In the original discussions, people were reporting different degrees of ease of finding his name via Google. Some said it came up in autocomplete on Google when you started typing his name, whereas others didn't get this, including myself. Perhaps it was influenced by region, as I'm outside the U.S.
Of course it became a whole lot easier to identify him soon after he took down his blog, as it suddenly became a much bigger discussion topic online.
But being written about in the NYT still takes it to a whole new level. Without that, it's just something that nerds like us talk about on obscure discussion forums like this. When it's in a feature article in the NYT, it becomes something ordinary people talk about at dinners and cocktail parties.
Publication of his name in a NYT feature would have made a huge difference to the awareness level of his identity, vs just being able to be sniffed out by determined online sleuths, and would have dramatically altered his identifiability with respect to his clients.
I can see it both ways and don't care to argue the topic any further, but this position deserves to be put.