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Questioning people's motives is a big no-no on HN. We try to keep the place free of that.
by jnordwick 9y ago
Questioning people's motives is a big no-no on HN. We try to keep the place free of that.
- mmjaa 9y agoWe'll .. I looked in the guidelines but didn't see any reference to this no-no. If its a big no-no, it should be in the guidelines, no? Is this something I should just know by experience by now, or am I overlooking this point from the guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I'm seriously asking, not because I want to cause trouble, but because I don't see this guideline being enforced at all except in this particular case with tptacek. Are you defending him?
- dang 9y agoIt's covered by the guideline that says "Be civil". Insinuating that someone else is a shill (i.e. lying for money) is deeply uncivil. It's impossible to make a list of all proscribed behaviors and if we tried, people would take it as a license to do anything not on the list. So that's not the way it works. As for whether the 'don't insinuate astroturfing/shillage' bit is enforced, try scrolling through https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20astroturfing https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR... and you'll find dozens if not hundreds of cases. Actually I've posted so many of these that my body rejects writing them and I have to trick myself into doing it.
- tptacek 9y agoI have a suggestion: write it one more time, in the site guidelines. :)