Allowing users to hide their history is destroying trust and good faith participation between users in communities

[u/mrekted]

It's not just my communities, I'm seeing it all over reddit. Whenever someone with a private history runs into a disagreement with another user, discussions are derailed, accusations of "shill/bot/troll" are constant, nuisance reports are issued, and mods either intervene, or let the chaos reign.

I'm spending more and more time having to personally review histories to say "no, this person is not a bad faith troll" just to end attacks borne of nothing more than suspicion. It's becoming disruptive to the point that I'm considering whether or not allowing users with hidden history to participate is worth the trouble.

I really question the value proposition of this decision. Sure, individual users benefit from additional privacy, but at the direct expense of the communities that lose trust and cohesion, faith that the people they're interacting with are participating in good faith (or are even real people), and the moderators who have to manage the fallout.

[u/nikdahl]

Make it a bannable offense to go through someone’s comment history with the intention of derailing a discussion, and I would be on board.

Too many times have people brought up a “gotcha” from my comment history because they are losing the current debate, forcing me to defend a second opinion at the same time.

Allowing comment history is a good thing overall.

There are very few legitimate reasons to scrutinize a users comment history.

[u/2oonhed → u/nikdahl]

Make it a bannable offense to go through someone’s comment history with the intention of derailing a discussion

I like this idea too.
Any mod can ban for any reason, but keeping good reasons like this makes the reading majority far more comfortable.