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Comment by adastra | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Paul Graham owes Michael O Church a damn thing. PG has always been clear that he built this site as a place for a certain type of reasoned discourse with a certain tone. And he enforces that as he pleases, as he should. He did, after all, build this place with his own two hands and he pays for it out of his own pocket.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if people have a secret "tone score" or similar that is assigned by moderators every time they make a nasty comment. And if that is the case, looking back on Church's comments it should be pretty clear that he'd have racked up one of the highest (lowest?) tone scores on HN. His comments are full of bitterness and hatred and scorn.

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I agree that who-owes-what is negotiated by the parties and not objectively pre-determined, and that we, as commenters, have a hand in deciding who-owes-what.

I ask you: would you want to secretly fail a secret grading criterion because something about you (tone, content (Church says it's content-based discrimination), et cetera) is not acceptable to a moderator?

Crucial points are: secret failing and secret grading. I wouldn't; I'd value the feedback, or get the heck out of there.

I agree. That sort of flagging leads to an echo chamber of like minded voices that excludes anyone with a reasoned, but differing view.

But that's what real-life is like. In most social situations, people are not going to tell you what they hate about you. This is as uncomfortable for them as it is for you.

As someone who was once friendless and unpopular, I agree that this is crazily frustrating. But it is the way it is for a reason; it is rarely a productive or pleasant use of time for someone to tell someone else why he sucks. If you're on the friendless and unpopular side, it's up to you to observe carefully and watch why some people are popular and some are unpopular.

"Tone" opens up a very ugly discussion I don't want to have here.

I don't know if Paul Graham is at fault for this, just to be clear about it.

Let's say he were. If he came out and said, "This is my message board, and therefore I assign personal penalties to the posts of those who oppose my economic interests", I would respect that.

What I can't respect is a silent personal penalty. That's ridiculous.

I've had this suspicion for months-- and I didn't voice it at first, because I don't much care-- but it's the latency difference and the looking into position of historical posts that made the case strong.

Why is this important? Why is it interesting? Because if I am being personally penalized, that means that the establishment is threatened by people like me who speak the truth about it. That would be a really positive sign.

It is very common, in both software systems and real-life social systems, to have silent personal penalties. You don't generally want to tip off abusers that you're onto them, because they will frequently adjust their behavior in non-constructive ways if they're aware of that. Similarly, if people find you obnoxious in real life, they will generally not tell you, they'll simply refuse to associate with you. Nobody owes you feedback, and it's a drain on their time and emotional energy to try and explain why you've offended them.

In both these cases, your signal is that people are choosing not to associate with you. If nobody wants to hang around you, that's a good sign you're doing something that's objectionable to a lot of people. If some people do want to hang around you but others don't, treasure the friends you have and stop sweating the ones you don't.

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