Ask yourself what (if anything) you gain by calling your factory method "new", and if it's worth the possible confusion of other people reading your code in the future.

I don't personally gain anything by calling it "new" other than it's typical. I'm just as happy calling it "make_a_big_fat_new_object", or separating constructor methods from factory methods, as I describe above.

I can certainly understand the concerns with clarity -- there seems to be diverse opinions on that. It wasn't my main concern with the post, however.

Thanks,
Matt