Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

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> We've asked you many times to stop perpetuating flamewars on Hacker News.

What do you define as perpetuating flame wars?

I was responding to a troll, fairly politely - the most heated it got was when I pointed out that someone that holds a gun to a pregnant woman's chest is a scumbag, but that's a fairly common viewpoint.

> abusing it and vandalizing it

How am I abusing and vandalizing HN? I am politely responding to a troll after a terrorist attack. That's more than you'll get on most discussion sites.

On the topic of abuse:

1. You've mentioned you're manually unflagging article submissions recently. How is that not abusing the site? Do you think that's made HN better, or worse?

2. While I have your attention Dan: why is this correction to a hoax (a boy was supposed killed when he was alive) that was on the front page of the site https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45130174 marked as a duplicate? What was it a duplicate of? Why was there no comment with a link to the article it was a duplicate of? When a previous story about malnutrition in Gaza was revealed to be a hoax, why was the WSJ article revealing that hoax also marked as a duplicate? What was it a duplicate of? Why was there no comment with a link to the article it was a duplicate of submitted?

Do you think manually allowing hoaxes and conspiracy theories onto the front page, and marking correction as dupes, makes HN worse or better?

Feel free to email if you want to take this offline.

What I define as perpetuating flamewars is posting comments that add to a flamewar and thereby provoke other people into continuing the flamewar.

Here is a random sample of you posting abusively to HN:

> There is certainly a racist piece of shit in this conversation but you may wish to look closer to home.

> I suspect you’re very young and not good at arguing

> if you’re not going to read when I respond to you there’s no point having this conversation.

> I think maybe we should stay and you should go.

Worse you've continued to post in this style after I asked you to stop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45252836.

Moreover, your account has been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle for quite some time. As you know (or ought to), that's another line at which we ban accounts: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

If you want to keep posting to HN, we need you to stop doing these things—that is, stop perpetuating flamewars, stop posting abusively, and stop using the site primarily for political battle. You're already over the line, and I'm cutting you slack because you've been around here such a long time. But if we're going to ban other people for abusing the site, it's hardly fair to keep giving an account behaving like yours has been a pass.

> I define as perpetuating flamewars is posting comments that add to a flamewar and thereby provoke other people into continuing the flamewar.

HN has changed since the flagged submissions are being manually unflagged. The site now has a huge amount of political content on the front page. This is not my doing. It is yours. You are the moderator Dan. You have said you are unflagging political posts. Stop blaming others for participating in this shitshow you're responsible for.

> > There is certainly a racist piece of shit in this conversation but you may wish to look closer to home.

That's a very reasonable response to someone labelling someone a 'racist piece of shit'.

> > I suspect you’re very young and not good at arguing

That's quite calm and reasonable.

> > if you’re not going to read when I respond to you there’s no point having this conversation.

And likewise. It's entirely reasonable to point out someone you are conversing with is not responding to the the points you make. Why on earth would you find this abusive?

> > Yes, that's how I feel. I mentioned he was standing up to racist hiring practices, you ignore and don't reply.

Again. That's very civil and reasonable to write.

Regarding:

> Worse you've continued to post in this style after I asked you to stop

HN doesn't have a notify option, people have to scan replies. I responded to you as soon as I noticed your reply.

> Moreover, your account has been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle for quite some time.

As I have previously discussed, you've been manually unflagging posts sent to the front page, increasing the amount of flamebait and conspiracy theory content on HN. The site is combatative Dan because you have made it combatative.

I have previously discussed what you're doing to the site at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45253049. Please respond.

HN hasn't changed in that way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. But even if you had been right about that, it wouldn't make it ok to break the rules. That ought to be obvious, no?

Pointing the finger at other users is not a good way to respond when you have been breaking the rules. Everyone always feels like the other person started it and did worse (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). The only way out of the downward spiral is for users to take responsibility for their own posts and follow the rules regardless of what others are doing.

I'm happy to answer questions about HN in general, but not when the questions feel like a cross-examination and/or a distraction from an important moderation point. If you're curious about aspects of how we operate HN, I'll be happy to answer your questions once you've corrected the things I'm asking you to correct and have built up a track record of using HN as intended.

(But I hear you re "you've continued to post in this style after I asked you to stop" - if you actually hadn't seen my reply yet, then yes, that is a good point. I apologize for assuming wrongly.)

> HN hasn't changed in that way

You have written you've manually unflagged stories, and from the tone of it that seems like a change.

I know 'HN has gone downhill' is an old meme but manually unflagging seems to be a new moderation behaviour and the amount of political posts is high. Hence people commenting on them.

> it wouldn't make it ok to break the rules

What rules have I broken? You seem to think I've been uncivil, I've been incredibly civil as previously discussed. The best example is me responding to a troll with their own language back at them.

> Pointing the finger at other users is not a good way to respond when you have been breaking the rules.

I raised what you were doing with moderation weeks ago and you didn't respond.

I've given you examples. I get that you disagree, and interpretations can differ of course, but it's the same standard we'd apply to anyone's posts.

Since those seem like obvious calls to me, I wonder whether you are experiencing the skew in perception where people underestimate the negativity in their own posts and overestimate the negativity coming from others: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> me responding to a troll with their own language back at them

If you think that another user is trolling, you shouldn't be responding at all. This is in the guidelines: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls. And you certainly shouldn't be responding with "their own language back at them" - that's the perpetuation of flamewar we're talking about.

If I didn't respond to an earlier question, the most likely reason is that I didn't see it. Either way, pointing the finger at others is a poor way to respond about your own rule breakage.

> If you think that another user is trolling, you shouldn't be responding at all. This is in the guidelines: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

It's really hard to do that in the current HN environment. We've had a number of confirmed hoaxes put straight onto the front page - the disabled boy that was presented as starving, the Anthony Aguillar allegations, the dead boy that's still alive. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nailer

How can we not respond to trolls when the trolls submissions are being manually unflagged?

The HN guidelines also state:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

The manual unflagging and influx of political chat created as a result recently makes it seem like the guidelines have been suspended.

> And you certainly shouldn't be responding with "their own language back at them" - that's the perpetuation of flamewar we're talking about.

OK, I won't do that again.

> If I didn't respond to an earlier question, the most likely reason is that I didn't see it. Either way, pointing the finger at others is a poor way to respond about your own rule breakage.

Do you want to respond now? If it is unclear, I understand that you are making that point, I disagree that I am pointing the finger at your in response to you discussing the combatative environment on HN and I am suggesting the environment has changed on HN due to the unflagging of stories that would have been dead anytime from 2-18 or whatever it is years ago.

The best way to handle this:

_____

Tell HN: most political submissions will now be removed

8000 points by dang

We recently started manually unflagging political discussions from the HN front page. This has caused a huge increase in the amount of combatative political discussion on the site and the we can see the change has not been for the betterment of HN. The HN guidelines state "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." and we're now going to go back to enforcing that rule.

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