Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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All I can tell you is that I spend tons of time interacting with commenters, trying to help people understand that line (https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=dang). It looks like that has included multiple explanations to you over the years:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32759008 (Sept 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932634 (Jan 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20456414 (July 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18991797 (Jan 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18984737 (Jan 2019)

I've posted thousands of explanations like that. The reason is not just to persuade/explain to individual commenters, but also to give everybody else a sense of where the lines are.

My sense is that if someone really wants to grok the intended spirit and make a good faith attempt to follow HN's guidelines, it's not that hard to do. Sometimes, though, people take the more obstreperous approach of "I don't agree with your rules and I don't see why I should follow them" (<-- I'm not quoting anyone specifically and I'm not imputing this attitude to you). In those cases, arguing about where the lines are doesn't help, and ultimately we don't have much choice but to ban such accounts. Often they then say "you're just banning me because you don't like my views", but that rarely has anything to do with it.

Some of this is cultural, meaning some people have a greater distance to "travel" behaviorally in order to fit the culture here. That may not be fair but there's not much we can do about it; there is a culture here that we're trying to foster, and that's only possible if commenters abide by it.

"multiple explanations to you"

Actually, the last two were about someone else's comments and the one before that was a misunderstanding ("you've made yourself a straw man" wasn't a "personal attack and name-calling", what I meant was "you've made a straw man out of my comments for yourself to attack"). Just don't want to look like serial offender :)

I have absolutely no argument with everything else you wrote.

However, the problem with the line begins when I see comments that seem to violate the rules and yet elicit no reaction from mods.

Off the top of my head: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270224 .

Or somewhat milder case https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32901464 with the follow up below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909607 (especially the last one).

I cannot say I'm surprised by the lack of response but that's disappointing nonetheless. I guess the comments I asked about 'fit the culture here'.

I responded to you twice already after posting the moderation reply. It's not possible to keep every conversation going—that's nothing personal, nor a function of the topic. It's a function of the unmanageable quantity of material that needs responding to. I wish I could satisfy everyone who wants personal attention and detailed replies, but I only have one me and it's physically impossible.

The comments you linked to were unsubstantive and provocative but I don't think they crossed the line at which we would moderate comments, and I don't think they violated the rules nearly as badly as you did in this thread, and also the other commenters who I banned in this thread, who were on the opposite side of the fight from you—which btw led someone else to accuse us of moderating HN in your side's favor. Everyone always thinks the mods are siding with their opponents. In reality we're just siding with HN's rules and trying to prevent the forum from destroying itself.

It's true that you're in a different situation, because your view is a minority one in this forum. HN is a highly international site but it's definitely majority-Western and that means Western views, Western reports, and Western media are the main things represented here. People in minority situations often get so frustrated that they lash out, break the rules, and behave so aggressively that we end up having no choice but to ban them. At that point they usually feel that they've been banned because of their minority views—but that's not so*. It's because they've been breaking the rules, often very badly and frequently.

The solution would be to represent your minority views respectfully, understanding that you're talking to a majority that has vastly different assumptions and can't easily relate to what you're saying, and to take responsibility yourself for bridging the gap. It's true that that puts extra pressure on the minority, and arguably that's unfair, but it's still in your interest to take that responsibility. If you don't, i.e. if you lose your cool, lash out bitterly and so on, all you do is give the majority a fresh reason to be sure of their own correctness. You become the 'bad' one confirming the righteousness of the 'good' ones, who of course don't notice when they themselves behave badly.

p.s. before someone accuses me of taking the wrong side in this war: I've been making this argument for many years to users representing any minority view on HN, on a wide range of topics.

* (We try to protect minorities here, of all sorts, on all topics—not because we agree with them but because it's better for the forum to have a diverse range of views represented.)

"I don't think they crossed the line at which we would moderate comments, and I don't think they violated the rules nearly as badly as you did in this thread"

Seriously?

Where have I written anything worse than "The lengths this guy will go to, to deny his country's ethno-fascist roots. Russian-exceptionalism is a hard drug to come down from." as a reply by jevgeni's to the string of my "thoughtful and substantive comments"? [0] And I'm here assuming ignorance on part of 'marshray', not hate speech.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909607

Sorry, I didn't see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998796 when I wrote. Yes, that's bad, and if I had seen it at the time I would have replied. You did a better job in that thread of sticking to substantive argument than the other commenters did. If you had stuck to that in every thread, we would have had no reason to ban you.

Honestly, I find the dialog here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270224 much more toxic and against the guidelines. I hope you just missed something while reading it.

Anyway, there are plenty other comments like the one you found objectionable and the authors aren't banned or even warned (as far as I've seen). I believe that you are sincere, but to me the bias is clearly present.

I think it's time to stop pointing fingers at others and take responsibility for how you broke HN's rules badly and frequently. Even if you're right about bias, which you aren't, you wouldn't have been banned if you'd respected the guidelines here.

Anyone who looks closely at HN moderation on this topic is going to see that we've warned and banned plenty of accounts on both sides of this war (same as with other wars and battles). The rest is explicable by randomness. We don't come anywhere close to seeing everything that gets posted here.

I realize you perceive things this way because you have reason to feel strongly about the war, and also because the demographics of the HN community are skewed in the other direction, for reasons I explained at length above. However, other people also have reason to feel strongly about the war.

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