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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Please don't post unsubstantive comments like this to HN. Two better options are: (a) make it a good comment by substantiating the accusation, or (b) don't post.

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

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I'm genuinely curious, "Pure politics: conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We’re not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say, software patents."

The comment above seems to be speculation that backroom deals played a part in a major tech news story. Speculation based on expert opinion often seems welcome, but speculation colored by negative experiences with the political jockeying that tech firms often do to accomplish their goals is not welcome.

Suppose the user above is a tech CEO with expert experience negotiating land deals with city government. Suppose they're a clerk in city government who often are privy to these deals. I feel like you may be making some broad assumptions of your own about what rises to the level of expert opinion and that's got a noxious effect on conversation here as well.

I'm not sure what your point is. If the commenter is an expert on the subject, or has some inside knowledge, making those things clear would be one way of making the comment more substantive. As it stands, it reads as if it has just been made up.

I'm assuming that by "the locations were pre-selected" the comment means that the outcome of the process was predetermined. That's a huge claim. Obviously a comment making a wild accusation without providing any basis for it is unsubstantive. It lowers discussion quality noticeably when people sling such charges around. I realize it's a fun thing to do on the internet, but there are other places for it.

Its the subject matter that seems to warrant intervention by a moderator. Speculation about a state actor in a high profile breach or outage or speculation of any kind where the poster might only have tangential knowledge and not be a true insider doesn't seem to warrant moderation.

I've noticed lots of instances where a high profile technology company may be responsible for some wrongdoing gets the notice of moderators.

It leads me to believe this particular kind of speculation presents a specific problem for hacker news and the moderators.

Such perceptions are in the eye of the beholder; whatever a reader feels most strongly about, that's what they'll notice the moderator moderating, or failing to moderate. It is an inverted image of your own feelings and beliefs. People who like/dislike other things have different images of moderator bias.

I don't much care, either way, about Amazon or any other high-profile technology company. I care about doing a good job for HN. Assuming I didn't misread the GP comment, it seems like an obvious case of somebody making something inflammatory up on the internet, so I posted a moderation reply. This is routine. Yes, there are plenty of other cases just as bad where we don't reply. That doesn't mean we secretly agree with those comments. Most often it means we didn't see them.

Perhaps you could update the guidelines regarding your take on when it is acceptable to speculate and an appropriate way to do it.

This did not seem to be a throwaway comment to me. It seems entirely plausible that a backroom deal was reached between local politicians and Amazon. Such deals were solicited and a major part of the reporting around this story.

Unsubstantive == dang don't like it.

Worst moderator I've ever seen. Seriously, you are just atrocious.

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