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Comment by jrflowers

6 days ago

>The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get.

There are like 20 rules for commenting on this site. Pretty much all of them are versions of “have decorum”, and none of them are “do not advocate for violence”. It is not just tolerated but encouraged to post insane stuff here so long as it sounds highbrow enough (eg the “most charitable interpretation” rule. It is against the rules to call out stuff like advocating for violence if it’s written like Niles Crane wrote it).

As far as I can tell this thread is not really exceptional in any way other than some of the ire is directed at somebody that used to work for YC.

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jrflowers

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dang  5 days ago

I don't recognize what we actually do, or feel, in anything you've written here, and agree that it would all be pretty disgusting if it were true.

"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence. If you ignore the most important one, of course you'll end up with a distorted view.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> this thread is not really exceptional in any way

It was different when I first saw it last night - it was, as I've explained in other comments, very much a mob. But I did a bunch of the usual moderation things that we do to try to dampen such dynamics. (The part where I also expressed feelings about it was different, and not so usual. I've done that a few times over the years, but mostly try to process it offline.)

As for the implication that we only cared about how bad that thread was because of the specific individual involved, yes, that would also be pretty disgusting—but the fact is that I've done, and do, the same moderation on countless occasions, large and small, and it doesn't depend on who the target is. In fact it isn't about the target at all—it's about the commnuity, and the poisoning effect that such threads have on us ourselves.

  • jrflowers  5 days ago

    >"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence.

    The guideline in full (at least as it’s presented on the page)

    >Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

    Is meant to be read: “Do not advocate for violence. (decorum). (decorum); (decorum). (decorum)” ?

    I would be surprised to find out that I am the one user on this website to have read “be kind” in that context to be an ambiguous suggestion about conversation quality or whatever rather than a rule about what topics of discussion are flat-out banned.

    Given that virtually every other platform that facilitates user interactions has clearly-delineated guidelines about what is and is not ok to post about, eschewing that in favor of “be kind” sort of gives the impression that such guidelines here are unnecessary because people will… conduct themselves here… with, for lack of a better word, decorum.

    Seeing as kindness is left entirely up to each user to interpret and decorum is described in detail, it is unsurprising to me that this site gets a lot of polite or analytical-sounding reprehensible rhetoric.

    It is like if you made a rule that everybody has to have a prominent horn section, walking bass line, and off-beat rhythms with a calypso influence and then wondered why your second rule of “don’t be rude“ didn’t stop everybody from playing ska.

    • dang  5 days ago

      It's meant to be read as "Be kind."

      We've never tried to fully specify what these rules mean because (1) that's impossible, (2) it would give the misleading impression that whatever isn't listed in the specification must be ok, and (3) we don't want to be bureaucrats. HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place, and always has been. I don't think it's any kind of stretch to say that advocating for violence is against the intended spirit of this site.

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