diff --git a/INSTALL.md b/INSTALL.md
index 9f9abb1..25ec6c9 100644
--- a/INSTALL.md
+++ b/INSTALL.md
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ You can edit the `docker-compose.jsonnet` file to set the configuration options.
 * `segments_path`, the local path to save segments to.
 * `db_args`, the arguments for connecting to the wubloader database. You will likely need to update the `user`, `password` and `host` to match the database node that you are connecting to.
 * `ports`, the ports to expose each service on. Only the `nginx` port (default on port 80) needs to be externally accessible for a non-database node as all the other services are routed through `nginx`.
+* `localhost`, the name of the local machine as it appears in the database `nodes` table. This is prevent the node from backfilling from itself.
 
 To generate the `docker-compose.yml` file used by `docker-compose`, run `generate-docker-compose`
 
diff --git a/backfiller/backfiller/main.py b/backfiller/backfiller/main.py
index 66a8b89..412b791 100644
--- a/backfiller/backfiller/main.py
+++ b/backfiller/backfiller/main.py
@@ -242,9 +242,9 @@ class BackfillerManager(object):
 		only the URL is provided, the node name is taken from the hostname.
 		Third, node names and URLs can be requested from the database given by
 		--node-database. If multiple nodes URLs with the same name are found,
-		only the last is retained and any nodes matching the local hostname
-		(given by the --hostname argument) are ignored to try to prevent this
-		node from backfilling from itself."""
+		only the last is retained and any nodes with names matching the
+		localhost name (given by the --localhost argument) are ignored to try
+		to prevent this node from backfilling from itself."""
 
 		nodes = {urlparse.urlparse(node).hostname:node for node in self.static_nodes}
 		
@@ -269,7 +269,6 @@ class BackfillerManager(object):
 				WHERE backfill_from""")
 			for row in results:
 				nodes[row.name] = row.url
-		nodes = {key:val for key, val in nodes.items() if val != self.localhost}
 		nodes.pop(self.localhost, None)
 		return nodes.values()
 
diff --git a/docker-compose.jsonnet b/docker-compose.jsonnet
index c29f29a..39f6663 100644
--- a/docker-compose.jsonnet
+++ b/docker-compose.jsonnet
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@
   peers:: [
   ],
 
-  localhost:: "http://example.com", // the name or URL of this node as it appears in the nodes table of the database
+  localhost:: "http://example.com", // the name in the nodes table of the database
   authentication:: true, // set to false to disable auth in thrimshim
 
   thrimbletrimmer:: true, // set to false to not have nginx serve thrimbletrimmer pages.