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Comment by mpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I can't square that with their last sentence.

Moreover, when I feel empathy with someone who feels different and unrecognized by society, something still keeps me from advocating for the censorship and misrepresentation of a writer's ideas and internal logic.

I think what's stopping me is the knowledge that if I'm fortunate enough to write something that lasts beyond me, I sure as heck don't want anyone updating it for the sensibilities of 2053. Putting myself in someone's shoes, I think there's a word for that

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Again: there's no advocacy (at least nothing evident to me) in that comment. It's a descriptive comment, not a normative one.

"more agreeable authors" sounds normative to me, and "they were replaced with more agreeable authors" sounds menacing

> It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy.

Come on guy, it's not that hard to see. People have been pointing it out to you for hours now.

Please don't cross into personal attack.

I didn't. In fact, tptacek is right above you making a thinly veiled personal attack at me and others here.

What is your relationship to tptacek dang? Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up.

"Come on guy" and "people have been pointing it out to you for hours now" are rude and personal. Please make your substantive points without swipes. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I didn't see personal attacks from tptacek. Some of his comments in this thread were edgier than I would like but I didn't see any that broke the site guidelines badly enough to warrant a scolding the way your comment did. Based on what I saw, this isn't a borderline call and (in case you're worried about this) it has nothing to do with disagreeing with you—just look at my posts on the actual topic.

> Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up

The active ingredient there is "I see". What people see, and fail to see, is basically determined by their passions on a subject. If all these years of moderation have taught me one thing, it's that.

"Come on guy" is "rude and personal"? A "swipe"? Shit. I bumped that down about three levels of rudeness before posting. That's my max.

And people were pointing out tptacek's errors in understanding. How is that rude or personal to state?

Tptacek wouldn't take any of it in, or respond to any of the points made. Instead he threw around actually rude and personal attacks.

> The active ingredient there is "I see".

I'm not "passionate" about tptacek, or HN, or yourself.

However, in your "years of moderation", you've seen plenty of people take issue with tptacek's habit of twisting of people's comments. I know you have. It's a regular sight.

The complaints are generally about issues quite a few steps above "Come on guy." Twisting people's words, personal attacks, wilful ignorance, etc.

So I'm left with the same question as before - what's your relationship exactly? Because it's pretty off-putting to see such bias. It makes me wonder.

Yes, what you posted counts as rude and personal by local standards and we ban accounts that do that repeatedly, so please don't do it again.

Re "twisting of people's comments" - that's your interpretation based on your priors. People make these judgments all the time—in fact they come up in nearly every argument as soon as emotions get activated. You're overestimating what moderation can do if you think we should impose our own such interpretations. And they wouldn't agree with your interpretations in any case (how could they?) so you wouldn't get what you wanted even if we did. No one would! In fact it would amplify the complaints about moderation by many orders of magnitude.

If someone is wrong or you think they are, the helpful thing to do is respectfully provide correct information. If you can't or don't want to do that, please just chalk it up to someone being wrong on the internet and walk away. The one who stops posting first in tit-for-tat exchanges is the one who wins anyway.

Also, HN conversations are basically never good once people start arguing about what each other is really saying, so when things take that turn, it's a sign that it's time to stop.

I'd hardly call dang threatening, unless you're threatened by him politely asking you not to break the rules. And you were. If you find being politely asked to follow the rules threatening, you can politely leave.

I feel like there are several people on this thread who don't really understand what "empathy" means.

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