Actually, that is one of the things I rather like about HN. The "loss" is built in: after a couple of days, nobody is going to read or respond to any of my comments. Everything I write here will effectively disappear several days from now. And that, somehow, is very refreshing: I don't have to worry about posterity or the future.

HN is my way of indulging in the present. No plans, no worries, no future. Very relaxing.

It's also a way of tricking myself to write. In high school, I never liked writing much and, consequently, was never much of a writer. Now I like it more; hopefully my writing improves correspondingly. HN is obviously no way to become a writer, but that is not my goal: I just want to be able to write clearly, nothing more, nothing less.

If I was doing something more lasting, I would not want to trust a single entity. This is why all my code on GitHub is also backed up at home with the most important projects also backed up on my school account: losing that would actually be painful. Losing my comment history here? Trivial.

It depends; more than once I remember reading something on here from some time ago and I do a site:news.ycombinator.com search.

It's sort of interesting to see discussions about technology that has long since moved on.

I would feel freedom. At that moment, my involvement in HN would come to an end, and I would find another way to use the 2 hours or so a day I spend on it. Think about what I could do with 700 hours/year.

Indeed, I would embrace that deletion.

That's good for you, but most likely the average HN user would cry foul and over zealous moderation.

Er, you can have that freedom now, if you want it.

That's like telling an alcoholic they don't have to drink. There's a reason why I've _never_ even glanced at Reddit. And I also took the plunge and deleted my Facebook Account. I lost three months of my life to Tribal Wars. I keep my time on HN to a couple hours a day - and it is my principal news source (No Techcrunch/engadge/verge/gizmodo - unless they are linked) - but if a moderator came and said "Deleted, return never again!." - I would embrace it. Not saying that's true for anyone else. I am implying that someone who spent the better part of two years managing a sherlock fan site, only to have it go "poof!" - shouldn't feel bad whatsoever.

This is why I create a new throwaway account whenever my HN karma gets too high. No attachment, no loss.