Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

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HN mod dang, if you are reading this, I have a question. I was previously given a warning for a post that levied factual criticisms about the quality of source code contributions performed by a woman who had intentionally put work forward into a highly public open source project in her own name.

I had specifically mentioned her by name in my criticisms, and I was given a written warning that doing so went against HN's policy on "targeted attacks" or "targeted harassment" or something similar.

Why is it okay for this user to suggest that the act of this woman presenting her work publicly "is the problem", while it is a HN AUP offense for me to criticize the quality of the source code contributions written by another woman presenting her work publicly?

I'm not requesting enforcement against this user or a retroactive removal of my warning, I'm just trying to understand the difference better to improve the conformance of my own discourse to the intent of HN's AUP.

Interesting question. I'm not sure what "woman" has to do with it since they're both women, but we'll go with it. It would be helpful if you could link your comment, but I guess it's been nuked. Anyway...

Just because you can tie a person to work they have performed using public records does not seem like it should put them on the same level as someone who communicates with and creates work directly to the public, or a public figure. Not even if some of the actual work itself is performed in some open and observable space -- For example I don't think one has any more or less moral right to commentate on and publicly critique the work of a carpenter working on a building scaffold that's easily observable from the public street, than one does about a programmer working on their own idea from their own home in private. That seems like the immediate obvious difference between the two situations you describe. They don't sound equivalent at all, so I don't think you can win your case on that angle.

But work by "non-public-figures" is frequently posted about and commented on at Hackernews. Obviously open source work is a significant source of such discussion simply because it is accessible. Therefore, clearly it's not entirely verboten to talk about that. Is it permitted to criticize? I don't have a particular example at hand but I'm quite certain that I've seen negative opinions about people's work on this site from time to time. I think this is the angle you could argue your case. Was it fair and consistent that yours was called an attack or harassment? Are similar criticisms of work by non-public-figures permitted on here? Without the full context we can't answer that.

In my understanding, one reason Sabine gets readily attacked (as user `cardanome` does here) is because of her criticism of orthodox physics theories. She has famously exclaimed that all cosmological theories supposing a “beginning” of the universe are essentially “a creation myth written in the language of mathematics”.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32618719

Read the linked blog post by Sabine again. That’s not what she says at all.

She’s saying something much more specific about the earliest moments (milliseconds!!) of the history of the universe, and before that time, of which we have practically zero observational data, and can’t ever visit even in principle.

She’s arguing against woo, against science fiction, against unsupported what-if musings that are fun to talk about — but are not science.

It is extremely unlikely Dan is reading that, or the posts above yours. HN mods are only human and can’t see everything, that is why members have tools like flagging.

If you want to contact Dan, email HN and make your case. The concat information is at the bottom of the page.

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