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This was discussed thoroughly yesterday. I suggest we don't rehash the same thing. It's a guaranteed flamewar and now also just a repetition.

Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555525 - April 2023 (1161 comments)

Edit: When the original thread was happening after Bob Lee was killed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899), I considered pinning a comment to the top of the thread reminding commenters that none of us had any knowledge of what had happened and asking them not to have a flamewar between pre-existing narratives. I decided not to because I didn't want to overly interfere, but I regret that now.

It's a bit funny how you refused to moderate when the dominant narrative aligned with the one Garry Tan has been trying to push.

I spent my entire day moderating those threads—to the detriment of the rest of HN actually. That happens sometimes when one story takes all the moderation oxygen. See the links below. (Edit: I'm going to move them to a child comment and collapse it so as not to overload this thread with 40 links. They're there if anyone wants them.) The reason I didn't post the comment I mentioned in the GP was not lack of moderation, but the opposite: I was moderating so much that I didn't want to be accused of over-intervening.

If anyone cares - in the end the decisions I made were (1) to factor out the comments that were actually about Bob Lee into their own thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341), and (2) to let the other flamewar just burn since there wasn't anything we could to do stop it. The first decision was a good one—that thread spent many hours at the top of the front page. The second decision was probably good also—I have a pretty fine-tuned sense of what we can't control. But I do regret not posting that other reminder. I very much wanted to, and overruled myself—and now I wish I had left a better record of the mods upholding the value of not rushing to judgement. I was painfully aware of this at the time.

p.s. You might be wrong about Garry too. I happened to talk with him that morning and although he didn't try to influence how we handled the story on HN (people at YC don't do that), the direction of the conversation was opposite to what you're assuming. (In any case, if you're implying that Garry's politics influence HN moderation in any way, that's definitely wrong. We haven't changed anything since he came back to YC.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35486328

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35476876

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35476872

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35472256

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35472227

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35472223

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35472212

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35472140

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464652

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464630

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464305

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464293

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464011

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35462897

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35461644

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35461639

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35461615

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35461026

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35460904

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35459597

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35459100

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458875

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458185

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458135

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458074

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458022

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458002

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457994

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457951

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457815

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457642

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457617

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457562

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457507

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457402

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457289

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457243

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457192

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457134

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457127

Btw I wasn't favoring either side in the flamewar, just doing the standard mod thing of asking people not to break HN's rules so badly.

Why can't tech people be a part of the lawlessness?

Criminals all the way up.

> Pretty terrible example to use for the lawlessness of SF. Everybody involved is wealthy, and the attack was totally personal.

The fact that a person was stabbed and killed on the street and the killer felt he could get away with it is kind of a good example of "the lawlessness" you're trying to downplay. This doesn't depend on the socio-economic status of the stabbing victim, or the attacker.

We don’t have any idea if the killer thought he could get away with it. Sounds like a crazy guy and I suspect he was in a rage and may well have similarly killed Lee if they happened to be in any other location other than SF as well

Weird anecdote but okay? My original comment on the stabbing story did wonder if it was targeted or random. Either way, passerby's walking past Lee gasping his last breaths for help is indicative of the civil rot happening in our cities.

The only thing worse than evil men is the indifference of good men.

> passerby's walking past Lee gasping his last breaths for help is indicative of the civil rot happening in our cities.

This happens all the time... wanna see something fun, walk around your city saying "hi" to everyone and see how often you get a "hi" back.

I know well what it is like living in the city. I've done it for 18 years :)

It is too bad people aren't cordial anymore.

Also in SF seeing someone struggling to stand on the sidewalk is not uncommon.

Everyone just starts to assume that person is drunk, on drugs, whatever.

> passerby's walking past Lee gasping his last breaths for help is indicative of the civil rot happening in our cities

We don't know what was happening in those cases. For example, we don't know those passers-by did or didn't actually see. Let's not make the same mistake all over again of projecting a pre-existing narrative onto a paucity of facts. (I don't mean to pick on you personally. We all do this, of course.)

Edit: FWIW, there's a long history of belief about bystander apathy which hasn't held up under scrutiny. Related:

Surveillance cameras debunk the bystander effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20417986 - July 2019 (161 comments)

Killer of Kitty Genovese Dies in Prison (Origin of “Bystander Effect”) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11430051 - April 2016 (3 comments)

Bob Lee did approach a car to show his stab wound. The car drove off.

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/video-appears-to-sho...

Yes, but unless I'm mistaken, we don't actually know what the driver saw.

oh yeah, it was super clear when the hyperventilating was coming solely from one sector of the SF populace, which happens to be the same subset that keeps make questionable claims about pretty much all the SF crime and homelessness issues, while also saying that the only solution is mass incarceration. When it's something like SFGate/the chronicle using the story as a talking point you have to assume that it's just "omg this crime impacted a rich person for a change".

Maybe that whole foods wouldnt have closed if it was just rich guys stabbing each other by the arugula.