>I just noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35563286 - yikes, that's really not ok. But I'm going to assume that your intention not to do that kind of thing backpropagates to cover earlier cases as well.
I noted your attention to that comment earlier today, but am only responding here and now. And yes, your assumption is correct. Thank you for (in this case, and in general here on HN) for embodying the ideals in the the HN guidelines.
I can't speak for anyone else, but your example makes me more inclined to calmer, more reasoned and good faith posting.
In fact, when I joined HN 2.5 years ago or so, I left behind a different news aggregator (which shall remain nameless) because I realized (not without provocation, but as you correctly point out, that's not a good reason to be a jerk) I was acting just as poorly as those I would castigate there. And I didn't like what sort of person that made me.
HN, its users (for the most part) and the consistently enforced guidelines led me to be more measured, thoughtful and mindful of the impact of my interactions with others.
As we've seen, I'm not perfect, but I'm much more of the kind of poster that I want to be thanks to that.
Just to confirm my understanding WRT the comment referenced, it was the last three words that were the bulk of the problem, yes?
> you don't seem to know much about how humans work [...] comes off as almost racist
You broke the HN guidelines pretty badly here, first by getting personal, and second by not doing this: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
The result was a whole litany of complaints elsewhere, which were understandable if off topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17359858).
You unfortunately have a long history of breaking the site guidelines. Would you please reread them and fix this? It's really not ok, and even though I appreciate your substantive comments, their value doesn't obviously exceed the damage you've caused with harshness, swipes, and uncharitable responses over the years.
> The reason you think that [...] has anything to do with it is
This is already bad, but
> you lack charisma to such a degree that
...crosses into personal attack. That's not allowed on HN, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't. You can easily make your substantive points without it anyhow. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
Edit: we've had to ask you this twice before. That's not cool:
There's clearly a pattern here. I'm not going to ban you now because you've also posted good comments, but please don't post any more personal attacks to HN, and please avoid tedious tit-for-tat entanglements with other users where the argument slides further to the right of the page as it slides further down in quality.
> Comments like yours really piss me off. You have absolutely no self-awareness or empathy, and come off sounding like a know it all.
Oh dear. This kind of personal attack is not ok on HN and we ban accounts that do this. Could you please not do it again, regardless of how un-self-aware another comment seems or how you feel in response?
Your comment would be fine without the first and last sentences. It's hard never to write such things but it's always possible to edit them out. That's what I do when something like that slips out.
This breaks the HN guidelines in two ways. First, it's uncivil. Second, it falls far short of this:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Could you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow those rules when commenting here? It does take an effort, but it's an effort everyone needs to make if we're to succeed in having a bit higher quality here than internet median.
A personal attack like this makes a hellish thread worse still. We ban accounts that post like that. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and following them?
> If you think another commenter is abusing HN you can flag their posts and/or email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.
That doesn’t actually work for most things. Only when behavior becomes egregious are you able to intervene. It doesn’t do anything to engage with ideological memes which this site is rife with.
> But pouring fuel on the flames makes you as destructive a contributor as they are,
This is an overstatement and frankly a misread. I am happy to follow your guidance about disengaging from the thread, but you are misstating my intentions. Take a look at my involvement in this thread as a whole context.
> which is why the guidelines explicitly ask people not to.
Yes. And I don’t think it’s obvious that what I’m doing is ‘pouring fuel on a fire’ or outside the spirit of the site.
I can see that a lot of flamy comments have been added to this tree, and generally I have ignored anything that seems to incoherent or includes personal attacks etc.
> I know this question may violate some HN policy, but I can't help but ask: What's wrong with you?
There have been times in the past where I've made HN comments that were meant as constructive criticism to another HN user. But my accidental tone ruined any chance of my comment being helpful. @dang was gracious enough to provide me detailed feedback [0], and it seems to be working for me.
Edit: while I have you—could you please stop posting snarky and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? You've done it a lot, unfortunately, and we've had to ask you multiple times already. Continuing this way eventually gets your account banned.
I don't want to ban you, so it would be good if you'd fix this. We're trying for a different sort of internet discussion here, as the site guidelines should make clear if you review them.
That's a really bad worst case, far below the line the guidelines draw. Would you mind reviewing them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We want thoughtful, curious conversation here, not snark and fulmination.
> People get defensive sometimes, so what?
The problem is that it evokes worse from others and leads to a degenerative spiral, ultimately to flamewars, and in the long run to the site burning itself to a crisp. Remember that this has traditionally been the fate of internet forums and HN was started as a conscious experiment in trying to avoid that (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). Scorched earth is not interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
It's possible to learn not to provoke this kind of thing, and that's what we're asking users here to do. Of course one can't predict specifically how others will react, but one can definitely play the odds. Since the odds are roughly knowable in advance, we want users to post comments with a positive expected value, so to speak: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Whoa. You can't attack another user like that here, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.
I realize that other comments in this thread were also bad, but this one stands out as particularly personal. That's not cool.
>Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky.
"Every day humans make me again realize that I love my dogs, and respect my dogs, more than humans. There are exceptions but they are few and far between." [2]
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
"Which sort of doesn't matter since everyone thinks GitHub is source management." [1]
>Please don't post shallow dismissals
"You all lost out on "the most sane and powerful" as a result." [1]
"Calling it a sane and powerful source control tool is just not supported by the facts, calling "the most ..." is laughable." [1]
"Calling Git sane just makes it clear that you haven't used a sane source management system." [1]
"Lots of people are too busy/whatever to know what they are missing, maybe that's you. It's not me" [3]
>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."
"Arguing with some random dude who thinks he knows more than me is not really fun." [3]
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills"
I've been on HN for almost 6 years, and I don't think it's gotten quantifiably worse. The tone has changed, but it's hard to say much beyond that. In fact, the moderation has gotten much better; and 'pg not commenting anymore has (in my very subjective opinion) improved things (any of his comments would dominate a thread's discussion).
> There are just people you let get away with crap and ones you don't.
It's really a comment-by-comment thing rather than a people thing. If you're seeing cases where we're failing to moderate a post that cries out for it, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We'd appreciate links, because we can't come close to seeing everything here. Or of course you can flag the comment (described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). In egregious cases, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is best because then we're guaranteed to see it sooner.
> His goal was to antagonize me while flying under the radar
Really, are you sure? Can you point to the comment that demonstrates this? Because either I missed something obvious or you're reading perhaps a bit too much into what was posted. Intent is notoriously difficult to read accurately in these posts, as I'm sure you know.
I noted your attention to that comment earlier today, but am only responding here and now. And yes, your assumption is correct. Thank you for (in this case, and in general here on HN) for embodying the ideals in the the HN guidelines.
I can't speak for anyone else, but your example makes me more inclined to calmer, more reasoned and good faith posting.
In fact, when I joined HN 2.5 years ago or so, I left behind a different news aggregator (which shall remain nameless) because I realized (not without provocation, but as you correctly point out, that's not a good reason to be a jerk) I was acting just as poorly as those I would castigate there. And I didn't like what sort of person that made me.
HN, its users (for the most part) and the consistently enforced guidelines led me to be more measured, thoughtful and mindful of the impact of my interactions with others.
As we've seen, I'm not perfect, but I'm much more of the kind of poster that I want to be thanks to that.
Just to confirm my understanding WRT the comment referenced, it was the last three words that were the bulk of the problem, yes?
Edit: Cleaned up my prose.
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