Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth the trouble you're going to get into. You take the Kolmogorov option and decide to wait out this insane time period.

Only it turns out, when you don't decide to argue for that subtle and qualified defense of Damore, a bunch of alt-right internet trolls make some terrible fallacious defenses of things he didn't say. Suddenly, the original censorious instincts seem much more righteous and justified. After all, "Now there are only full-throated red-pillers arguing in Damore's defense! We were right all along!"

Now there are two sides to this issue, and they're both identity politics and brain-dead shouting. Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong.

So: subtle and qualified defence under a pseudonym; stay quiet under your own name?

The ability to doxx is too great today for pseudonyms to work well enough. The necessary opsec is more akin to that used when publishing illegal things the (real) government actively persecutes.

What would you need to do to limit doxxing potential?

Most of all, consistently apply the maximum level opsec right from the beginning. Even if the first hundred posts on your new blog are inoccuous, you can't let them be connected to you when five years from now you find out that you actually want to write about something controversial for once. The hardest part is planning ahead and investing a lot of time and effort before the point where you actually publish the dangerous thing you don't want to be doxxed for.

A blog (or any other publishing mechanism) needs an audience, assuming your goal is to affect public discourse. You can post anonymously or using a short-lived pseudonym on Hacker News and other forums, or on any blogging/publishing platform like Medium, and this is very secure if you never use the same identity before or after. But you're very unlikely to affect many people with your writing that way.

You can't use your regular identity's reputation to drive attention to a one-off post ("Steven Pinker responds to the Google Memo controversy!"). And you can't (reliably) produce one or a few posts so well written and timed that they spread virally and affect many people even though you've never published under that identity before.

So you need to spend a lot of time and effort publishing other things under that identity to acquire a following. You need to be able to consistently write things that attract the kind of people you want to reach and give you the right reputation.

Obviously regular good IT security is needed: don't let your server / publishing account be compromised, vet your hosting service's security, etc. Access it via Tor, setup posts to go up at unpredictable times not tied to your timezone or what you're doing at the time (work/leisure), cultivate a style of writing that's clearly similar across that identity's posts and dissimilar from other things you write. Don't refer to the pseudonym when in any other identity; even if others mention it, don't say you've read it or discuss it. And so on.

Is there some kind of guide about this?

How can you beat a linguistic analysis? If you publish elsewhere and someone guesses to compare your work, are you screwed? Are there any programs that scan writing to determine if the writer's english is Canadian or American or British etc? Or maybe your gender? Could you use that to weed out any regional phrases, or use regional phrases from other places to confuse the text? How do you make sure you don't sound the same in your real life, using similar phrases (For example, if Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex had another blog that was not anonymous, would it be nessecary to not use expressions like 'Steelman' or refer to effective altruism?

Should you look in the academic literature about language, and try to make it so your style can't be detected by theoretical methods of linguistic analysis that haven't yet been implimented computationally?

How do you deal with private communication? Does it make sense to simply have no possible way of privately emailing you, making all communication public (thus giving you plausible deniability if you click any links phishing for your identity). Should you not even interact with public comments?

What about any information you might giveaway even when you are being a VPN or something (browser info? Some kind of computer associated seriel number? internet cookies?). Is it overkill to simply have one device dedicated to researching/blogging, and restricting yourself from doing normal day to day work on that computer? What about a virtual machine?

Can you buy and pay for a domain anonymously?

Should you make a list of things you are willing to reveal about yourself, and stick to it? For example, A/S/L and then make sure never to reveal other details (former locations, trips with dates, schooling, etc) Should you change details of anecdotes if you share them?

If you trust someone, perhaps a girlfriend, or wife, or really good friend, is it too risky to share with them your identity, even if you agree to never discuss any of it digitally? Assuming they also keep a wall between themselves and that identity (not sharing posts, not telling friends, etc) is that safe? If you do break up, should you create a new blog, and if so, is it worth it to make the writing style clearly different from the old blog? Are there any high profile, clearly psuedonymous people who have remained so for long periods of time?

By making this post, should I now do none of these things?

I'm not any kind of expert on this. I don't have personal experience (obviously I wouldn't admit it if I did, but still); I'm just making educated guesses based on my knowledge technology, people, and the way that previous doxxing campaigns have succeeded. I hope someone else can answer your questions better; I don't want to mislead by sounding more authoritative than I should.

I can't think offhand of someone in the Internet era who became famous (for writing/posting) under a pseudonym, where people had incentive to doxx them. That I can't think of such cases is very weak evidence they don't exist; the majority of cases would occur in non-English media which I don't read anyway.

Scott Alexander is a good example of someone who has succeeded in having large and diverse online following behind a pseudonym. But he's not an example example of what you're looking for. He is very weakly pseudonymous, trivial to doxx. He often refers to his personal life on his blog (more so on his Tumblr), his pseudonym is linked to his real name, and many people know him in the flesh as the author of SSC.

There is good information online on correctly, securely using Tor and VPNs to remain anonymous and on securing (and ideally segregating) the computer you're using for this. This information is often targeted to whistleblowers and to people whose thread model is their governments, but it works equally for anyone.

Interacting with public comments on your own blog should be fine if your connection to it is securely anonymized.

You can register a domain anonymously using bitcoin or prepaid CC without providing your contact info, but then the registrar is the owner of record of the domain and you have to trust them. The biggest danger may be that in the event of a dispute or wishing to transfer to a different registrar, you won't be able to assert control over the domain name without revealing your identity. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy

Making a list of things you're willing to reveal about yourself and sticking to it sounds like a good idea: precommit to clear rules, use checklists.

The linguistic analysis questions depend heavily on both your threat model and on future technological development and I don't dare to try answer them.

My impression is that the average Joe doesn't have enough of a public corpus for this to make a difference. But if you're an academic who blogs both publicly and privately? You might want to check it out.

There have been a several recent cases of political doxing of pseudonymous users. Blogger "Delicious Tacos", alt-right Youtuber "Millenial Woes", /r/the_donald user "HanAssholeSolo", and several members of the alt-right blog "The Right Stuff" have all been exposed at varying levels by various organizations. , As far as I understand, they were all exposed through OPSEC violations in their content, rather than technical violations. In the US, calling out the SWAT team when the target forgets to VPN before logging on to IRC is reserved for black-hats and child pornographers, at least so far.