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Comment by satellite2 | Hacker News Reader

You have to be careful with your choice of words. Especially on an engineering / science forum. The word "proven" implies a definitive certainty backed by solid theoretical foundation and a massive body of evidence. Very few things are proven in social science and economics. And most of them are simply definition.

You are free to express your opinion though, but please mark it as such and make at least a small effort to explain how you reached it as otherwise your post is not adding value to the conversation.

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This public official laying down rules “you are free to… but please” tone has become commonplace on HN in the past few years. Anyone know the origin? Perhaps a shift in public enthusiasm for controlling speech? Did it start at universities? It seemed to just show up one day around 2018. It’s incredibly distracting.

The audience of hackernews has grown and old users are trying to maintain the culture of the site. The value of this site comes from its community. Let's not turn it into reddit. I personally welcome this type of policing.

There's a certain irony in creation dates here:

mmaunder: 2007. satellite2: 11 months ago. dexwiz: 2015. alonsonic: 2016. burnished: 8 months ago. nostrademons: 2007.

Anyway, I don't think such tone-policing is all that off-culture for HN, nor do I mind it all that much. PG explicitly said back around 2008 that posts which keep the discourse civil and intellectually honest are welcome even if they don't directly add content. I just thought that there's a certain irony about "old users trying to maintain the culture of this site" when the users in question are less than a year old and are responding to someone who's been here for 14 years.

Some of us change account names as a matter of internet hygiene. I think I've had 6 or 7 here over the years, and even this old one was dormant for most of its life. Anyway, the point is you never know just based on account age.

I'm not a public official, but I like my readings to be informatives and display a good faith attempt to convey the truth. HN is one of the rare place on Internet that manages to do both. And I think everyone can contributes when given the opportunity to do so, so I think a small remainder can be better than an outright downvote / ban.

Seems like you are confused about why people might respond negatively to you (the comment thinking the issue is around 'shiny dirt'), and that some one had the time to try and explain what might be going on.

I see some one stating outright their respect for your freedoms, but it seems to trouble you. Why is that?

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