Comment by SV_BubbleTime
15 hours ago
I would suggest categorizing the quality of comments by its content and not its creator. Oh, nevermind, that’s a silly thought.
Challenge my core belief? Well… I could rationally evaluate that, or, I could just use a tool to block it from my vision! Bubble thickener.
There are some trolls in here that seemingly evade getting banned despite their moronic comments...
Also, many comments just take a wrong premise and attack you (e.g. that not wanting the slaughter of innocent people equals supporting terrorists who want to slaughter innocent people). They don't offer anything more than that, so that IMO taking the time to consider their mostly one-note opinion is just wasting said time.
> There are some trolls in here that seemingly evade getting banned despite their moronic comments...
As moderators we can only judge comments according to the guidelines, and can only ban accounts if they repeatedly breach them. You're always welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) about an account that has been continually breaching the guidelines.
I don't have the name(s) off the top of my head, but can't you do a query of users whose account age are greater than (some threshold) but whose median comment score /amount of flagged to death comments is past some other threshold.
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I think that's the point though? Plenty of things not worth engaging with also aren't technically violating any rules: but wasting the brainpower on them also isn't worth it in a reliable way.
That's where an ignore system is useful.
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I have emailed HN before when I spot really terrible things and they have been quick to effect change.
There are enough bad-faith commenters on HN that I personally would find this very useful.
asking this out of curiosity due to recent reflection on similar - what's stopping us simply not responding to those arguing in bad faith ?
For me, the little red dot is a reminder of "this user has made bad faith comments in the past, I probably shouldn't engage."