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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

You've been breaking the site guidelines so egregiously and repeatedly that I think we have to ban this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: to be clear, I'm not just talking about this comment, but similar ones like these, which I didn't see at the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518160

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24517902

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24517881

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24517448

You simply can't post like that to HN, no matter how wrong or ignorant others are, or you feel they are.

View on HN

Understood, its your prerogative and your choice. I feel that inference is not derogatory nor offensive, and I would rather be banned that be required to coddle those who are incapable of receiving or digesting criticism or engaging in difficult dialog.

I come here for the intelligent and interesting discussions. Often times these are the types of discussions that are difficult for people as they contain ideas that challenge one's sense of self and place are the most uncomfortable. But without those challenges, people will never grow. Trees are strongest where the forces of nature are not buffered. People are as well.

Take care

> Trees are strongest where the forces of nature are not buffered. People are as well.

That may be true of trees and people but it is not true of internet communities. I think you're making a category error. The confrontational style you're talking about requires smaller, more cohesive environments to generate interesting outcomes. On a large, anonymous, open internet forum like HN, it just produces repetitive flamewar, then brain death, then heat death. Since the idea of HN is to be interesting (to the extent possible), we have no choice but to moderate this. I wish it were different—it would be a lot less work.

Usually when someone posts the sort of argument that you did, I have found that it's possible to persuade them to follow the site guidelines once they understand that everything we do follows from trying to optimize for interestingness (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). It's not about enforcing some tedious moral code. If you decide you buy that and want to use HN as intended in the future, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and let us know.

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