But we're not going to delete everybody's account and mix them all together, are we?

If I took a bunch of "minor" writing and mixed it together under one fake name name, but some of it was written by a famous author under a pen-name, then yes, in theory it could be possible to identify those.

That's a very theoretical problem though, isn't it? Individual comments don't have the length of books, and usually don't individually contain enough text to be unique. Once the account-relationship is gone, it's essentially like splitting all the books up into paragraphs and trying to attribute individual paragraphs. Unless you're Wittgenstein or someone with a similar interest in exploring how long sentences can be, I doubt there's enough there.

Of course, all of that is hardly useful, since HN is very open and lots of people have copies of all comments.

Okay, 1% of the library. I see threads here every-so-often asking about deletion, and I imagine there are more people who would like the opportunity but already know the answer and doesn't ask.

Curious what happens when an HN user inevitably wants their dead-name changed but retain their history, and whether that would be a harder path to march than being deleted for privacy reasons.

I don't understand the question.

Edit: Thank you for the clarification (reply), I was not aware of the term "dead-name" refering to that. I still am not exactly sure what you are asking though. If a replier wrote the original username in an old reply that was written before the name change? In that extremely rare case, it might cause some confusion if a third person reads the old thread, in which case perhaps the user initiating the name change could use the search function for any instances of that, and then email the HN admin?

There is a high incidence of transgender people in our community. Often, names are changed, the old name is referred to as a dead-name. Addressing someone by this deprecated title is the height of disrespect.

If you email hn@ycombinator.com, they'll change your username for you. (Near the bottom of https://hackernews.hn/newsfaq.html)

All of those comments were written from the perspective of a person who no longer 'exists' tangibly as they've transitioned.

Then perhaps what the transitioning person is looking for, is just creating a new account to go with their new self?

I'm not one of those who are affected, so unfortunately I'm without a sound rebuttal. You do raise a good point. Given that I'm not, someone who is may have more perspective that'd support one assertion vs the other.