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Comment by jrflowers | Hacker News Reader

>The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get.

There are like 20 rules for commenting on this site. Pretty much all of them are versions of “have decorum”, and none of them are “do not advocate for violence”. It is not just tolerated but encouraged to post insane stuff here so long as it sounds highbrow enough (eg the “most charitable interpretation” rule. It is against the rules to call out stuff like advocating for violence if it’s written like Niles Crane wrote it).

As far as I can tell this thread is not really exceptional in any way other than some of the ire is directed at somebody that used to work for YC.

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I don't recognize what we actually do, or feel, in anything you've written here, and agree that it would all be pretty disgusting if it were true.

"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence. If you ignore the most important one, of course you'll end up with a distorted view.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> this thread is not really exceptional in any way

It was different when I first saw it last night - it was, as I've explained in other comments, very much a mob. But I did a bunch of the usual moderation things that we do to try to dampen such dynamics. (The part where I also expressed feelings about it was different, and not so usual. I've done that a few times over the years, but mostly try to process it offline.)

As for the implication that we only cared about how bad that thread was because of the specific individual involved, yes, that would also be pretty disgusting—but the fact is that I've done, and do, the same moderation on countless occasions, large and small, and it doesn't depend on who the target is. In fact it isn't about the target at all—it's about the commnuity, and the poisoning effect that such threads have on us ourselves.

>"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence.

The guideline in full (at least as it’s presented on the page)

>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Is meant to be read: “Do not advocate for violence. (decorum). (decorum); (decorum). (decorum)” ?

I would be surprised to find out that I am the one user on this website to have read “be kind” in that context to be an ambiguous suggestion about conversation quality or whatever rather than a rule about what topics of discussion are flat-out banned.

Given that virtually every other platform that facilitates user interactions has clearly-delineated guidelines about what is and is not ok to post about, eschewing that in favor of “be kind” sort of gives the impression that such guidelines here are unnecessary because people will… conduct themselves here… with, for lack of a better word, decorum.

Seeing as kindness is left entirely up to each user to interpret and decorum is described in detail, it is unsurprising to me that this site gets a lot of polite or analytical-sounding reprehensible rhetoric.

It is like if you made a rule that everybody has to have a prominent horn section, walking bass line, and off-beat rhythms with a calypso influence and then wondered why your second rule of “don’t be rude“ didn’t stop everybody from playing ska.

It's meant to be read as "Be kind."

We've never tried to fully specify what these rules mean because (1) that's impossible, (2) it would give the misleading impression that whatever isn't listed in the specification must be ok, and (3) we don't want to be bureaucrats. HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place, and always has been. I don't think it's any kind of stretch to say that advocating for violence is against the intended spirit of this site.

>HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That is exactly the point that I made. This is a website where the pretty much the only hard and fast unambiguous rules are about style and decorum. It is not hard to draw a line from “it doesn’t matter what you say so long as you say it nicely enough” to “people are nicely saying terrible things on that website.”

I’ve seen the “You can post anything on hn if you phrase it right” joke in group chats for years now, so this thread isn’t surprising to me in the least.

I’m not really sure how you and I could disagree on this. You are the admin here, this has been the worst thread you’ve ever seen, and you say that changes that would prevent this would be impossible and in major conflict with the “spirit-of-the-law” culture here. It does not seem possible to simultaneously claim “this is not the culture here” and “we would have to sacrifice the culture here to prevent this”

Sorry but dang's rationale is just nonsensical at this point. Spirit of law does not mean having no articulable laws, or principles, or ethics whatsoever. This moderator seems very philosophically confused, and would benefit from further education in philosophy, social studies, political-economic theory, and related subjects. Especially if this incident is bothering them so much, it is an opportunity for reflection and learning. It is tempting to think up one's own theories, about "bad mobs", etc., but a lot of these issues are well-trodden by incredible writings of intellectuals and thinkers, so why attempt to reinvent the wheel and commit all these pitfalls in the process.

Do you realize you're attempting to tell a moderator of the site how the guideline for the site is meant to be read?

Well no, I asked a mod how the guidelines are meant to be read, and shared how a user could see a particular one as somewhat ambiguous.

If mods categorically had the ability to make every user fully and equally understand the nuance and meaning of all of the rules then being a mod would probably be a much easier and rewarding job.

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