Comment by prododev
10 months ago
HN is pretty low moderation across the axis of personal attacks. If you politely say a ad hominem or racist or *-phobic thing here, it's unlikely you'll be moderated for it, for instance.
I can dig up many such examples, but I suspect the response would be, "of course that's not moderated" because this community has a different set of values than some others.
Moderation is always an editorial action, and as such we tend to view it as strong when it aligns with our own values and weak when it doesn't.
That doesn't match my experience of what we do, so I'd like to see those "many such examples".
IMO, if you're going to make charges like this, which would be serious if they were true, you should include links so readers can make up their own minds.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42959625
My methodology: Search for any of the following terms: woman, biological, Black, Latino, gay, trans, woke, dei, or virtue signal
Set to "Comments" and "30 days". You'll find plenty of people saying things that are pretty awful. Yes, they are not the majority of posts, this place isn't a cesspool, it's just a place that permits "just asking questions" or "it's up for debate" as a defense for behavior
I could find many, MANY more examples.
Thanks! I appreciate your taking the time to do this.
Of the 10 links you listed, 7 seem to me obviously to break the site guidelines and I've flagkilled them. One, incidentally, was from an account that we banned earlier today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907076. That one seems thoughtful and in keeping with the site guidelines. It does use a lot of sort-of trigger words (I counted "trans", "vegan", "left wing", "Democrat", "progressive", "conservatism", "Republican"), but surely we're not going to punish people just for using words like that.
The other two seemed borderline to me, although I confess that one was so long that I couldn't read it before becoming le tired.
> I could find many, MANY more examples.
I'd be interested in seeing them, and I hope it's clear that I mean that. I don't want to argue about this—I want to see what you're seeing.
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