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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Why is it uncivil to ask whether someone might have a financial interest in an outcome? It's a common enough situation, and I think an entirely reasonable response to hyperbole.

One of pg's most famous essays, The submarine, identifies the phenomenon of apparently disinterested reportage or commentary actually being engineered by those who are commercially interested in a particular point of view gaining popularity.

I reject your claim of incivility and stand by the legitimacy of my inquiry. I have always made a point of preemptively declaring an interest or lack of same when it appeared my comments might be read as advocacy on behalf of a specific firm.

Since you've detached this from the discussion I'm going to go ahead and say that I am having increasing doubts about your neutrality as a moderator.

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Just for what it's worth, I think that essay did more damage to discussions on HN than pretty much anything else he's written:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=http:%2F%2Fwww.paulgraham.com%...

In the overwhelming majority of the cases it's cited, it's used mostly to suck the oxygen out of a discussion, so that rather than discussing the merits of an argument, we're instead required to first resolve the motives of the people making the argument.

I think you should keep declaring your interests in controversies! That's a good thing. I try to do that too. But I'm sure you've seen instances on HN of people litigating this issue and it making for stupid, angry, pointless flame wars. Even if you're very careful about when you deploy this challenge, the rules have to work for the median HN commenter, not just the super careful ones.

Shortly afterwards:

I also think Dan is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good by not updating the guidelines to say this directly and announcing the change --- I know that's because they have bigger plans for the guidelines, but it would save everyone some time to make this incremental change anyways.

It's a notorious trope that users pull out in internet arguments which, the overwhelming majority of the time, means nothing more than "I don't like what you say". It's toxic to civility and dilutive of quality. Heaven knows how many comments I've posted about this by now, but they all say much the same thing and have done for years.

We're not asking you to follow any rules that don't apply to everybody here. Conversely, you do have to follow them, just like everybody else.

I don't have a problem with that, but yet again I find myself feeling like I'm getting the heat for pointing out the existence of someone else's stinking turd.

>I'm getting the heat for pointing out the existence of someone else's stinking turd.

That doesn't require ad hominem, nor unsubstantiated accusations of financial ties.

As an obsessive HN comment reader, I would say I've noted your comments taking on an increased sense of vigor of late (don't mean to be creepy, but I read a lot of comments). Maybe browse your recent /threads and see if you agree?

That's true, but I do feel there's a difference between querying the objectivity of someone's view and leveling an accusation at them.

You're not wrong about my comments being a bit more charged lately. I have my reasons for this but whether they're well-founded remains to be seen. It's a difficult needle to thread.

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