Comment by OskarS | Hacker News Reader

Comment by OskarS | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people are piling on the original complainant for a ridiculous complaint, and rightly so. But they are not the only offender here, and arguably not even the worst one:

> To adhere to our values and the Code of Conduct, we had to delete a handful of comments, which is unfortunate but not uncommon. Our responses triggered more responses. Bots were being employed to create issues and comments. Temporary accounts were being created to spam the system. Offensive issues were being created. The repository was filling up with issues which, frankly, were uncalled for, and we needed to do something, fast.

Every person who felt the need to comment and create github issues (and even write spam bots to do so!) about a santa hat being removed is not a person that should be trusted with any sort of responsibility or employment in the software industry. The absolutely staggering lack of maturity here boggles the mind.

This is not how sane adults should act. On either side.

>or employment in the software industry.

For commenting to point out contradictory standards on what is considered offensive enough to remove? Really?

Edit: One satirical (per my own assumption) comment I read was complaining about calling the main branch master. The idea that using terminology such as master is offensive to some people seems at least as plausible as the santa hat being plausible. Perhaps more so as there have already been some discussion about the use of the term master in tech lingo. That is the kind of comment I'm thinking of, but want to be sure we are thinking of the same ones.

It's harsh language, but honestly: yes. Microsoft had to lock down the repository because it was being flooded with comments like this. For removing a santa hat.

I saw this story about it being removed as well, and I thought to myself "well, that's pretty silly, but whatever" and then five seconds later I had moved on with my life. The very idea that an grown person could be so upset about it that they would actually expend the mental energy to go to the github issues page and voice their opinion with an angry comment is mind-boggling to me. It is, in my opinion, an even more absurd reaction than the original complaint.

This is very meta.

You've commented twice on the incident now.

A sudden barrage of comments, including racist ones, smells like a chan op. Possibly including the original issue.

That was exactly my thought. The pattern of taking exaggerated but vaguely plausible offense to something, and then using any response (positive or negative) to that as an excuse to be hateful, is one that's repeated itself before.

We don't know about the original issue, but it did get some attention in chan circles.

> Every person who felt the need to comment and create github issues (and even write spam bots to do so!) about a santa hat being removed is not a person that should be trusted with any sort of responsibility or employment in the software industry.

They should be punished, shouldn't they? Put to jail?

It's the extremes that caused this. Putting to jail, or calling for it, is just another one. They all acted poorly. That being called out is of itself the condemnation. Answers or responses don't have to be dialed to 10 to be valid.

God, imagine being this utterly boring.

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