Please stop.
I read cperciva as condemning that and using this example to show that all online harassment edit[is / can be] severe.
Are you sure? His opening 'graph is:
"It's worth noting that this is just the latest in a long series of episodes of harassment which Randi has experienced -- it's not just another case of gamers taking their competition offline, which is the most common swatting backstory I hear about these days."
This seems to me to say: "This isn't a one-off incident; it's yet another terrible incident in a very long string of related harassment incidents."
He goes on to say that Randi has done a huge amount of work to actively combat online abuse.
I don't see where cperciva makes the claim that all online harassment is severe. (Truly, not all online harassment is severe. When my boss uses email to get on my case for overdue deliverables, that's online harassment; but it's a) minor and b) justified.) [0] :)
[0] Or, look at like 80% of what happens in Eve Online for boatloads of examples of minor online harassment.
To me it was as a statement that because the long series of episodes of harassment which Randi has experienced, this specific case is much more than all those gamers who complain about getting swatted, as their problem is just another case of gamers taking their competition offline. That this case is different from the norm (as Manishearth phrase it bellow), and thus worthy of notice in contrast to the problems of "gamers".
To me, that is belittling. Maybe cperciva meant the opposite, that swatting is a real crime and not something to be perceived as just "gamers taking their competition offline", but it was not the impression I got from that comment.
I guess if you said 'Please be careful not to' instead of "Please don't belittle" you would get less argument. Instead of assuming a particular intention, point out how you read the phrase and ask if that was intended.
Not what I intended at all. Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had written "yet another case"; my point was that this was not like most swattings and readers shouldn't pattern-match and assume they know what was going on.
I urge you to carefully re-read the comment that you criticized. It's pretty clear to me that cperciva has no intention of belittling anyone.
[0] Either chronologically or developmentally
[1] Or whatever
It's not made any better by describing it as "gamers taking the competition offline". Two problems; first, it's making it appear as some kind of a natural extension of playing a game / watching a game stream. Hey, it's just some competition, boys will be boys! Second, it's too symmetrical, basically spreading the blame between both the perp and the victim. Again if you can't see this, what would you say about describing this case as "some Twitter users taking their gender politics discussions offline"?
"It's worth noting that this is just the latest in a long series of episodes of harassment which Randi has experienced -- it's not just another case of gamers taking their competition offline, which is the most common swatting backstory I hear about these days."
(Emphasis mine.)
Asshole gamers calling in real-life SWAT because they can't handle feelings of inferiority is the most common reason for SWATting that I hear of.
I hold the opinion that giving police fraudulent information in order to summon SWAT on someone's house is HIGHLY inappropriate and -often- very dangerous[0]. While cperciva doesn't explicitly express his opinions on SWATting, the remaining 'graphs in his comment would lead one to believe that he also thinks that SWATting is serious business, regardless of motive.
[0] Not to mention, yanno, illegal.
What is the goal commenters in such threads are pursuing? To correct a wrong or misunderstanding? To show someone as biased or bigoted (or to advocate the other way)? Who are we training, and what is it we are teaching? Could it be done a better way?
Is the error cperciva may have made large or small? Does it have an impact? If insignificant, why does so much effort need to be expended? Otherwise, why are there not articles to reference on the issue? (Or are there?)
To be completely blunt, this all seems incredibly passive aggressive to me. I'm not talking about sexism--again, I'm simply referring to all of the meta analysis on communication and tone.
I am honestly curious, and my questions are not for dramatic effect. Could this all be short-circuited by a "I doubt the OP meant to trivialize XYZ, [...]" and be done with it?
Some discussion about the words in the comment is thus nice, as it hopefully helps everyone to understand why both interpretations are valid (or in extreme cases, reach a consensus on a single interpretation). I find in particular jsnell comment interesting, as it let me know how much value I unconscious applied into the phrase "just another".
The trouble is that people's standard for whether or not a post is awful (belittling/sexist/etc..) tends to be whether or not they feel it can plausibly be interpreted that way. This is the wrong standard - we should judge a post awful when there's no other way to interpret it.