Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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You've also done a great deal, unfortunately, to feed these flamewars. For example, you posted 36 (!) times in this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292351, which was not started by your critics. Worse, of the 52 comments you posted in this thread overall, all but a few were not flamewar. I tried to count the good ones but there were so many flamey ones that I ran out of steam.

I'm sure a ton of good work has gone into your lanugage, but we don't need a perennial flamewar on HN, so please stop feeding it. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37344925, which applies to several of you, not just Tozen.

The responsibility to fix this lies with you guys because you're the ones who (rightly) care most about the topic. The way I see it, there are two options: either (1) you give up on taking bait, focus 100% on the interesting parts of your work and 0% (and I do mean zero) on defensiveness and provocation, or (2) we just ban this topic from HN. Personally I'm fine either way, and I'm pretty sure the bulk of the community would be also. What I don't want is this status quo headache that comes up every couple months or so.

I'd gladly not waste time by not replying to bait comments spreading debunked claims.

Can these bait comments/threads just be removed to keep HN clean?

No, we don't do that and the community wouldn't support it.

But you say that flamewars are not wanted, and yet they are allowed to be started by a small number of accounts.

All of the flamewar threads in this post were done by 4 accounts, which follow V posts and my comments, and start the flamewars:

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zamberzand (an account created to only spread a single message throughout the years)

2) ModernMech, about 20 flamewar posts. This thread is very telling, where I ask not to start another pointless flamewar, get flagged, and ModernMech goes on:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37296225

The comment by riku_iki is spot on: "You are stalking him with toxic attacks on the minor issues which were resolved long ago; I think language which these people are using (scam, outrageous and frequently false claims, lying) is hard to call "mildly critical", and given they appear in multiple posts and their claims are not directly relevant to post, and proactively initiate all these toxic exchanges, this is exactly stalking."

3) richbell, 11 posts.

4) and a couple of new accounts that were thankfully flagged.

I'm not saying that all criticism of V should be flagged, just posts by such accounts, whose only purpose is to start flame wars.

You're doing exactly what I asked you not to do, perpetuating this pointless dispute. It's taking up a ridiculous number of cycles. If this keeps up, we'll ban the topic completely from HN.

My hypothesis is that if you guys stop responding defensively, the problem will simmer down and eventually go away. Stop focusing on criticism. Stop responding to it externally and stop reacting to it internally. Just ignore it. Work on your thing and keep your comments focused on what you've done.

If you want to do that, I'm willing to help you. But you have to actually do it. Responding like this is the opposite.

Ok I'll stop responding defensively.

Tozen can do the same. Since they didn't see your original warning, you should give them another chance.

Thanks.

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