My standard for cowardly posting is verbal abuse and death threats, but YMMV.
It should be OK to express your support for unpopular ideas on HN, like saying Adria Richards was right or that the people prosecuting Aaron Schwartz did the right thing. On the other hand, people sending threats... To quote the original poster, "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." You disagree with stuff? Fine. Downvote and move on, or reply to it and explain why. Don't play anonymous coward.
That's 'victim blaming' and fairly inflammatory. That's not your intent. It's no different then telling women not to wear provocative clothing if they don't want to be raped (And before people suggest it, I'm not equating rape to anything here).
Basically, your intent is sound (how not to receive death threats), but your approach is insulting. The result is, the persons you are talking to are more likely to dismiss what you say because, in effect, you are blaming them for the death threats.
You seem to actually care about helping. I wish I could offer some direct advice about how to approach this different, but I can't think of any at the moment. I just know that this approach is confrontational, and completely in the opposite direction of which you seem to want to go.
It's no different then telling women not to wear
provocative clothing if they don't want to be raped
Source?
[1] Survivor is a better word, but it was a clunky read when I tried it. I won't be bothered if you use it instead if you reply.
[1] Even among 'friends' (acquaintances?), chances you will be hit on are higher when wearing 'less' and considering hitting-on-and-being-rejected is a common precursor to rape...
Anyways, I tried to address another commenters questions about my post, and address it here:
That's ridiculous. If I play in a busy street everyday, you'd blame me when I eventually got hit by a car even though cars are always supposed to be driven under control. There are actions that victims take that increase or decrease their chances of being victimized.
> it's no different then telling women not to wear provocative clothing if they don't want to be raped (And before people suggest it, I'm not equating rape to anything here).
What about if it is telling women to go out with their friends and look after each other when they are at bars? To be aware of their surroundings? Is that victim blaming to prepare your daughter for the realities of the world?
> If I play in a busy street everyday, you'd blame me when I eventually got hit by a car even though cars are always supposed to be driven under control.
Context. You are supposed to comment on HN. You are not supposed to play in the street. If you played in a park, I'd expect you not to get hit by a car. If someone does get hit by a car while playing in a park, you don't suggest to that person they should avoid playing in the park.
> What about if it is telling women to go out with their friends and look after each other when they are at bars? To be aware of their surroundings? Is that victim blaming to prepare your daughter for the realities of the world?
No, that's good advice! And there is a distinct difference.
Yes, I know, the reality is that wearing provocative clothes can entice men, and some men will get the wrong idea, and might do bad things. But it's a bad solution to adopt the "change what you wear" approach. It doesn't solve the problem.
Basically, it's the same as this type of advice: If you don't want to get into an accident, don't use a car. Of if you dont' want to get into an plane crash, don't fly a plane. If you don't want to drown, stay out of water.
Or, if you don't want to get raped, look ugly.
But telling you daughter to go with friends, to be aware, to check in? These don't change her behavior. It minimizes risk. Indeed, if you think about it, the advice you give up there is much better than not wearing provocative clothing. Mostly because wearing provocative clothing has little to do with getting raped.
Anyways, I hope you understand better what I was trying to say. Again, it's not some new concept that I'm spouting. Spend some time reading up on it. Others do a better job at explaining it then I do.
Kids don't deserve to get hit even if they play in the street -- even if it is expected to eventually happen. I just think there is a cognitive break in responsibility (don't blame the victim -- they have 0 responsibility for their actions) to taking some responsibility for limiting your risk.
I'm not touching the provocative clothes argument, because it's extreme and might not be backed up by the statistics. I'm just saying there are some careless actions by victims (like flashing money around in really really bad areas by yourself) that means the victims while completely undeserving of being victimized realistically need to shoulder some of the responsibility.
The poster above suggested, that if an action a poster is doing is causing death threats, it might be prudent to tone it down. I don't see that as blaming the victim.
And I'm sorry, but if you know that a park is dangerous because a bunch of drunken teenagers are driving around doing donuts in it, you absolutely don't send your kid to play in it, no matter how safe it's supposed to be. And in particular, if they are, you tell your kid to stop yelling at the kids in the cars. (I realize this isn't what you suggested, but it makes your analogy less of a straw man.)
So, this isn't "don't play in traffic", this is "don't actively provoke known-to-be-crazy drivers while running around in oncoming traffic". It's just a bad idea. Especially if you're complaining about getting hurt.
Yes, all of these examples are hyperbole, but then again we have no idea about the seriousness of the threats.
I realize you did. And I'm not suggesting you are a bad person or anything. =)
> And I'm sorry, but if you know that a park is dangerous because a bunch of drunken teenagers
I'm sorry, but hyperbole can be too ridiculous. Tossing in additional conditions to suit your point is silly, and is really not worth my time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
All I did was attempt to make your analogy match reality more closely, to make it less of a straw man. It is a less flawed analogy now. The reality we are discussing is the situation of the person receiving death threats, not any of this other analogous stuff.
But, you know, if you just generally want to have discussions about what to do in different situations where one might or might not need to exercise caution, that can be okay. Of course if someone got hit by accident in a park I wouldn't say that other kids shouldn't play in it.
Linking to Straw man on wikipedia doesn't make it a straw man either.
But congratulations, you just discovered these things called logical fallacies.
> Of course if someone got hit by accident in a park I wouldn't say that other kids shouldn't play in it.
....
You are trolling, you have to be.
From above:
> Context. You are supposed to comment on HN. You are not supposed to play in the street. If you played in a park, I'd expect you not to get hit by a car. If someone does get hit by a car while playing in a park, you don't suggest to that person they should avoid playing in the park.
What can I say, I just genuinely don't understand why this isn't a straw man. Part of this has to do with me not being the sharpest knife in the block. Of course, if someone just randomly posted a comment here and received one death threat for doing so, I wouldn't say that they shouldn't post anymore. Isn't that the closest interpretation of your analogy? I'm serious.
The reason I think the analogy doesn't fit is due to a few differences. First, the person in question has a history of writing fairly inflammatory comments, based on my personal reaction, based on the comments containing curse words, sarcasm, insults, and all-caps (more recently), and finally based on the comments receiving downvotes. The second difference is that it's not one death threat, but multiple death threats that were alleged. The third difference is that I didn't say don't post at all, I just said don't post in such an inflammatory way. Given these three fairly significant differences, I concluded that your argument was a straw man. I could be wrong about that, but you'll have to convince me.
I now believe she was referring to Adria and not herself, so I'm really just interested in understanding whether or not the claim of it being a straw man is correct. I mean, I don't want to accuse other people of throwing up straw men if I'm just making a fool of myself. And you're right, although I've known about logic for a while, it's only recently that I started taking it more seriously in the context of discussions. I linked to Wikipedia because I thought you didn't know what a straw man was, I apologize for the insult.
Whether or not I'm trolling, I don't know what to say. It strikes me that a lot of people who troll don't even realize that this is what they're doing, so maybe I am, I don't know. It's not conscious, if so. Apologies in advance?