Presumably you have good intentions, but I think it's dangerous for us to have criticisms of one person's name come from other people who won't stand behind it with their own names.
Perhaps there is a whistleblower exception, such as when the person being criticized is powerful, and the whistleblower is vulnerable, but I'm not aware that's the situation here, and whistleblowing involves an investigation (by officials, journalists).
You're comparing a hypothetical danger of society gone amok with the practical already-experienced danger of pissing off a systemic abuser with tens of thousands of followers. Even this very HN thread is full of people blindly defending him.
If there is a functioning body of authority that is accepting confidential complaints, then I will happily use my real name. I am not eager to invite abuse just to help the HN community gain some awareness of what has been going on for years.
Not society gone amok -- we have institutions, which might be applicable. Is this within the purview of any of the Python organizations, open source funding organizations, donation payment processors, government authorities, etc.?
Reitz controls the Requests project. He accepted donations through a money transfer service that disclaims any responsibility. Smith has no grounds to sue Reitz. Government authorities are unlikely to investigate an uninvolved party's concerns about a possible $30,000 fraud with no known victims in their jurisdiction.
Whistleblowing does not always involve an investigation, by officials or journalists or anyone else.
As an example, here's a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower : "Most whistleblowers are internal whistleblowers, who report misconduct on a fellow employee or superior within their company through anonymous reporting mechanisms often called hotlines."
That is, 1) no investigation, 2) anonymous, 3) internal.
It's certainly dangerous if all the accusers are anonymous. However, in this case there are two who are not anonymous. How many are needed?
I'm sorry I failed to be clear that I wasn't questioning in this specific case, but am referring to general practices that I suggest are good to observe by default. I think we have evidence elsewhere that such practices are needed in public discourse right now.
That said, I understand that this specific case is complicated, iff someone feels intimidated, and iff and there is no authority to whom to appeal, so maybe it's an exception to general best practices.
Okay, I understand now that you were not making that implication. Thanks for cleaning that up.
Since general practices explicitly allow anonymous complaints for whistleblowing, including for anonymous complaints in public fora, I don't see how your appeal to general best practices affects anything - this already is part of general best practices.
Perhaps you could describe what practices you are thinking of?
Perhaps there is a whistleblower exception, such as when the person being criticized is powerful, and the whistleblower is vulnerable, but I'm not aware that's the situation here, and whistleblowing involves an investigation (by officials, journalists).