Wait, what? The first link points to you doing exactly what you're now claiming is impossible: pushing back, with threats of a ban, against behavior you recognize as human nature[1]:
>Can you please make your substantive points without snark or ... sneering at the community?
>It's human nature to make ourselves feel superior by putting down others, but it skews discussion in a way that goes against what we're trying to optimize for here [link].
>Edit: it looks like you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in a lot of what you've been posting here. Can you please review them and stick to them? I don't want to ban you but we end up not having much choice if an account keeps posting in this low-quality way.
I get that moderation is hard and time-consuming. But if you're going to reply to justify your decisions at all, I'm confused at why you'd do so just to invent a standard, on the spot, that you're obviously not following. (Hence why I charitably guessed that there was some more substantive reference I might be missing.)
Even if I hadn't though, it's your responsibility to follow the rules regardless of what others do. "But he started it!" is what I just referred to as a childish complaint. A less childish response would be to take responsibility for what one did, fix it going forward, and not plead other people's bad behavior as an excuse for your own. If we've been very unjust, other users will point it out.
We do our level best to be evenhanded, but we can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted, so you're never going to get perfect consistency from moderation here.
It always feels like the mods are harder on you than others, but that's an illusion. I'm not going out of my way to call you out; I barely recognize your username. My brain has been sandblasted into statelessness after years of doing this. If you've gotten repeated admonishments, it's because you've repeatedly broken the rules. The solution is to stop doing that, and also to stop posting bickering meta-comments, which just add noise and are of interest to no one else. If you need to express yourself about that, you're welcome to do so at hn@ycombinator.com.
> I enjoy taking what amounts to troll bait at face value, responding in kind while still attempting to add something to the conversation, and seeing where the conversation goes from there. If you have a problem with that, your problem is actually with the original trollbait or flamebait, not with me. I'm not usually the bad guy in these threads.
What you're describing is feeding trolls, which the HN guidelines (using nicer language) explicitly ask you not to do. It turns small flamewars into large ones, and the fault is with both parties. You're underestimating how much damage this does.
We all have a strong cognitive bias toward seeing the other person as "the bad guy" and ourselves as pure, or at least not-as-bad-as-him, which can be used to justify anything. Meanwhile the other guy has just the opposite view. That's how we get tedious spats. Please don't do this on HN any more.
Would you please make your substantive points less aggressively? I appreciate that you know a great deal about this topic and we all probably have a lot to learn from you. Nonetheless you crossed the line here, and not only here—repeatedly mocking someone for their username, for example, is a cheap shot. You undermine your own arguments when you do things like this, in addition to poisoning the culture that we're trying so hard to prevent from becoming outright toxic.
People overestimate their own humour and wit, and underestimate the provocations they supply to others. I don't mean to pick on you personally—we all do this. But it's certainly a thing.
I'm well aware that you've been posting here for 13 years. I think that's great. Unfortunately your recent comments (say, this year at least) have been full of swipes at other users—not all of them (fortunately!), but enough that you've been doing it routinely. That's just not cool. Would you please edit those out when you post? I certainly don't want to ban you but we ban others for that kind of thing and at some point we have to apply the rules fairly.
I generally support your first paragraph and the first sentence of your second. But your final sentence is illogical and immature. If you want @dang and mods to ban you; just erase your account.
If what you mean to say is "if what I am saying is wrong, then ban me for saying it," you should say that.
Regardless you've created a little drama for your biologically degrading snowflake, and it's unlikely they'll want to make you a martyr, but does your second sentence really add much value except to air your protestations?
Your recourse is to email hn@ycombinator.com, as the site guidelines ask. Note that I chided that person for what they did, which of course was wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right, though, and you're continuing to break the rules while they at least stopped.
For civil discussion we all need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the one we perceive other people to be keeping, because the only alternative is a downward spiral, and an accelerating one. If you want to keep commenting here, we need you to internalize that.
It sounds like you have a good point in there somewhere, but it's lost when you cross into personal attack, especially when it takes the form of an aggressive rant. That's probably why your comment was downvoted and flagged.
Edit: it looks like you've broken the site guidelines quite a bit and we even had to warn you about this recently. Continuing in that vein is going to get you banned here, so please fix this.
Since you're so interested in my activity here[1], you may notice that my very first, apparently terrible and flame-inducing post was about me pointing out that an article spelled someone's name wrong[2], modulo transliteration. Now you might argue that I was wrong, but do you really think that was such a terrible, unproductive and antagonistic post? The next mass of downvotes came when I replied sarcastically to someone who wrote that my concerns/arguments were "stupid" and not worthwhile. That provocative post towards me was, of course, not downvoted. My follow-up to my original, downvoted, post was at first well-recieved[3], but then creeped down to 1 again for some reason.
I'm not a victim by any means, and I'm sometimes an asshole. But maybe you should stop taking Karma at face value and stop believing that this community is beyond reproach. If you want to go through my history - which on this account is quite short - at least do it better.
[1] And your profile says nothing about you being a mod.
I've actually just reread through the guidelines and don't see how I could be said to break many of them.
I also don't believe I broke the civility rule. My comment is still substantive, remove the last sentence and it's just two good points and it's not something I would feel bad saying face-to-face. Maybe it's a bit snarky but HN loves snark and I see snark literally everywhere on this board - very rarely do I see you commenting below it.
I believe you should unban my account, I've made plenty of quality contributions.
"Come on guy" and "people have been pointing it out to you for hours now" are rude and personal. Please make your substantive points without swipes. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I didn't see personal attacks from tptacek. Some of his comments in this thread were edgier than I would like but I didn't see any that broke the site guidelines badly enough to warrant a scolding the way your comment did. Based on what I saw, this isn't a borderline call and (in case you're worried about this) it has nothing to do with disagreeing with you—just look at my posts on the actual topic.
> Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up
The active ingredient there is "I see". What people see, and fail to see, is basically determined by their passions on a subject. If all these years of moderation have taught me one thing, it's that.
Crossing into personal attack is not ok and will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
If someone is wrong, the thing to do is to patiently and respectfully explain how they are wrong, without swipes, name-calling, or cheap shots. Your posts in this thread were much too aggressive. We've had to ask you not to do this more than once in the past.
You went way overboard into incivility in your comments in this thread. In fact, although I'm sure you didn't mean to be, you were repeatedly a jerk. That's sad, because you obviously know some things.
We ban accounts that do that. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? That means being scrupulously respectful others, no matter how ignorant they are or you feel they are. If you know more, the thing to do is not to put down those who know less, but to explain some of what you know, so we can all learn.
Isn’t that the problem? You see your own shallow dismissals as tediously neutral, but others as violations of the guidelines.
For example, in this comment here that I’m replying to, you caveat what you say, and yet you don’t caveat any of the comments I’ve cited as ”your opinion”, despite them being the same value judgements of someone else’s writing.
“Please stop <value judgement of comment>.” Is about as textbook of a “shallow dismissal” as one could get.
You don’t apply the same rules to yourself, so there’s zero reason or incentive to follow those rules for the rest of us.
Edit: Hey, within an hour of writing this comment, I'm now slowbanned (a thing you at one point claimed was removed from HN). So I guess you don't like dissent either, dang?
Edit2: Since I can't respond (you muted me), the community doesn't evaluate your activity objectively; you're worshipped, and aren't give feedback that represents a reflection of your actual behavior, so an appeal to the masses here isn't an effective argument. The community may disagree with you, but it's actively detrimental to say so, and will apparently create negative repercussions for the folks who do speak out, creating a "chilling effect", preventing you from getting the "bloodbath" you apparently think would be necessary for you to change your behavior.
Additionally, the fact that you've made it harder for me to interact on HN as a result of this conversation is an indication that everything I'm suggesting here is even more true than I initially thought.
Taking a swipe at someone's parenting is crossing into personal attack, which we ban accounts for. Would you please err on the side of civility when commenting here? That's basically what we all need to do in order to have a community that's worth anything; the forces of internet degradation are too strong otherwise.
Every one of your points is true, and it's not that I disagree with you. It's that fighting fire with fire isn't ok.
If I was doing something they saw as an act of aggression, the answer isn't to then have a policy of acting aggressively towards me. Shoving my comments to the bottom automatically has certain implications, and it basically removes you from the community and turns the mods into bullies.
And I get that what I did may have warranted some sort of punishment, but at this point it's unclear what precisely triggered this or whether any of what you say is true.
If I deserved to get banned, then they should just ban me so I can move on.
Reacting to a bad comment with an even worse comment is not ok here. It's against the site guidelines, and you've been doing it a lot. We've had to ban you before for that, so would you please stop?
If you're posting to HN, you're responsible for helping to take care of this place, to the best of your ability and awareness. If others are wrong, correct them respectfully. If they are ignorant, teach them. If you know more, share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. Tearing others down helps no one, and worsens the very things you're complaining about.
I'm sure you wouldn't litter in a city park just because others do, nor would you fail to put out a campfire just because you were mad at other campers. Please bring those values here.
I couldn't care less if you ban me or not. I will change account and keep posting.
Also there is nothing personal in that message. And this is not the first time that some displeased person flags my message just because he feels unsecure and have difficulty to properly interpret the text posted.
In some cases when I post the same message again, it gets a very positive reception.
The fact that messages are flagged and removed despite of the positive reception goes to show how fascist and indoctrinated this community is, and also how capricious you are and goes to show that the rules are up to interpretation so posting a link does not clarify anything.
In fact you are the one who is doing the personal attack in this case if you think about it. So maybe it's time that you live by the rules that you preach?
>Can you please make your substantive points without snark or ... sneering at the community?
>It's human nature to make ourselves feel superior by putting down others, but it skews discussion in a way that goes against what we're trying to optimize for here [link].
>Edit: it looks like you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in a lot of what you've been posting here. Can you please review them and stick to them? I don't want to ban you but we end up not having much choice if an account keeps posting in this low-quality way.
I get that moderation is hard and time-consuming. But if you're going to reply to justify your decisions at all, I'm confused at why you'd do so just to invent a standard, on the spot, that you're obviously not following. (Hence why I charitably guessed that there was some more substantive reference I might be missing.)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717919
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