Comment by dang
2 years ago
"sure be writing a whole lot of cope" counts as name-calling in the sense that the HN guidelines use the term*, and that was just the beginning of a lot of that. It was snark, too, of course, which is also against the guidelines. And don't get me started on the shallow dismissals and the slur about age. Perhaps you're right that the comment contained substantive points, but there's no reason not to convey the substance thoughtfully, and that's what the site rules call for. (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
> I don't care for your tone-policing practices Dan.
You've said so many times. I appreciate that you believe it's possible to maintain discussion quality on a forum like HN while still allowing the GP type of post. I have a more negative view of what's possible. I'd rather you be right than me! But I'm not willing to run that experiment, when the price of being wrong is death.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
* Actually the example given in the guidelines ("When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.") is precisely about an argument not a person.
As I said, if there were a pattern of behavior here I'd disagree. I'm taking issue specifically with your pre-emptively shutting the down some comments citing the risk of flamewars. The price of being wrong is an occasional flamewar, not the sudden death of HN.
And don't get me started on the shallow dismissals and the slur about age.
Those abound on any thread about the Supreme Court or Congress interpreting or making laws about technology and I can't recall your ever intervening. I have brought the issue up many times because your moderatorial interventions seem very partial, not to mention the fact that you're addressing a 10-year participant in the HN community like a new arrival.
Hmm. I'm well aware that you've been here for many years! In fact I kind of referenced that in my comment ("You've said so many times. I appreciate that you believe [etc.]")—so I'm not sure how I gave the impression otherwise. But I certainly didn't intend to and I'm sorry.
I don't know what to tell you about "moderation interventions seeming partial". I'm basically just responding to people breaking the rules where I see them breaking the rules. It isn't a matter of what people's views are—at least I don't think it is, and I can tell you FWIW that I'm frequently scolding accounts whose underlying views I happen to agree with, as well as ones I happen to disagree with.
As for slurs abounding—if you're seeing comments like that not getting moderated, overwhelmingly the likely explanation is that we didn't see them. I don't see anything close to even 10% of what gets posted here.
Dan, the person you originally replied to has been here for 10 years; I wasn't taking offense on my own behalf. I know you're busy, but I'm surprised that you wouldn't glance at the account status of to see who you're dealing with, or indeed have some sort of admin console that makes it easy to see.
As for slurs abounding—if you're seeing comments like that not getting moderated, overwhelmingly the likely explanation is that we didn't see them.
Statistically, this seems improbable, especially given the existence of your flamewar detector. It's super-easy to measure which threads are 'hot', and not much harder to guess or mechanically infer what the content/quality of the discourse is going to be on many hot button issues.
> I don't know what to tell you about "moderation interventions seeming partial".
I've been here for some years now, and I can say weirdness that seems partial, continually happens. For instance, all site submissions that I've made for the last 2 weeks appeared shadowbanned/ghostbanned. They are not "dead", they simply don't show to the public.
When such things happens, it can leave users wondering if there is something going on with moderation, which is linked to the type of views expressed.
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