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Comment by cyphreak | Hacker News Reader

Klabnik has single handedly permanently deterred me from ever using rust. Terrible person, terrible language, terrible organization.

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Steve? What? We've had totally opposite experiences with him, I guess. Actually, Steve Klabnik makes me want to use Rust (and I'm generally quite happy with C++ and Ada). Very helpful, knowledgeable guy in my experience.

I suppose the dog ate the substantiation of that comment?

The only comment I'll make in this thread is to link to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098744

Odd. It was indicated in that thread that "We've banned this serial troll, of course, but the immune response from the community was particularly healthy here." I guess they got un-banned?

They certainly didn't get unbanned! And btw I vaguely recall other accounts being silly around a similar derangement-point, so perhaps this is a serial troll, which is one of the few cases where we just ban accounts immediately.

The comment might have gotten unkilled because of a bug that I might have introduced yesterday. Looking into it now.

Edit: yep, it turns out I introduced a bug, with the dismaying but hilarious property that flagging a dead comment would revive it. We'll revert the change and try again later.

Thanks dang! I do believe that this is a serial troll, but discussing that is very much offtopic for here, you have my email if you want to talk about it.

I know we sometimes have differences, but I do want to reiterate that I think on the whole, you've made this site better, and am glad that HN is taking moderation seriously.

He's still posting, so not banned? Or that because of the bug you're referring to? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=cyphreak

Pretty sure that was the bug, but if anyone sees weird behavior around dead comments and banned accounts, please let us know.

Okay, breaking my rule here: yes, I am wondering that as well. Here's my assumption: the mods straight-up banned this individual's previous accounts, but shadowbanned this one instead. But shadowbanning just kills your comments automatically; in recentish times, HN has added a "vouch" feature that lets you vouch for a comment and get it un-killed. So I imagine that's what happend, which seems like a weakness in the shadowbanning feature, though maybe it's good as well, I don't know. The right way to know is to email the HN mods via the "contact" link at the bottom.

That would definitely be the usual explanation but I'm happy to report that in this case there were no vouches.

I suppose I should be glad that nobody here leaps to 'programmer error' as an explanation for anything.

I hate to drag a thread like this out but I'm genuinely curious: why is there someone/are there people out there who have such an axe to grind? Or are they just trolls?

I wrote an extremely long comment here, but deleted it. I'd rather say this: like anyone who works in public, I am very open and vulnerable to criticism. When you work in public for a long time, there's a ton of reasons for people to decide that they hate you and have an axe to grind. Some of those things are things I still stand by, some of them are things that I agree that I was in the wrong. I am not a perfect person, and make mistakes like any other. It's up to you to see my actions, who I am, and decide for yourself.

Steve you're a good chap doing some solid, respectable and valuable work. These things are just troglodytes looking to inflict pain. The interesting thing is, they could totally transform themselves by doing constructive work and presenting it to the community. It's then, quite possibly, they realize, it is your attention they seek.

The heart is a complex place and the internet a good channel for its darker bits.

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