Thank HN: For creating a place for civil discourse
About eight years ago I stumbled across HN. It was more substantial than Gizmodo, had a topic mix that was more biased towards my interest than other sites I was using, and the comments suggested that the community was smart and passionate. I quickly began posting and commenting and,,, was rate limited. I wasn't being a bad actor. I was just excited. What gives? In the ensuing research into why I was being being placed in time-out I (I'm now sincerely embarrassed to admit) did pick a few fights, did not follow the guidelines, and soon my posts were [dead]. A mature response would have been to be introspective, acknowledge that I was one individual being allowed by a community to join their discourse and I should graciously do so based on the guideline that are provided. That, or I should move on. Moderators of HN even took the time to respond to an email I wrote with my concerns. They were very polite in their response. Instead I submitted a pretty long rant under a new username against shadow banning. (I'm only bringing this up for context, please let that not be the topic here.) The post went to the front page. I was like whoa. I think I still have a screenshot of that somewhere. That of course did not help my case. The submission went dead. But I kept on coming back. HN had created a framework that allowed me to keep coming back, that kindly nudged me towards better behavior. I was learning be a better, kinder participant. Looking back, two things. One, I truly believe I was only worked up because I immediately saw the awesomeness that was HN, and I truly believe that some tweaks to it's rules would make it even more so. But still, my sincere apologies for the way I did that. Secondly, I'm still here reading and commenting because of the guidelines, because of the moderators, because of the community. Everything has gone crazy in the media, social media, political arena, etc etc. Headline News is still civil, still relevant and topical, still fun and super interesting and educational. And in the past roughly eight years I've learned so much about civil discourse by being a part of this community. Thank you HN for creating this space.