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I hope someone from the admin team is taking a close look at this comment section here. I would really love to see some background.
by aluhut 9y ago
I hope someone from the admin team is taking a close look at this comment section here. I would really love to see some background.
- iamnothere 9y agoI'm confused about what you mean by this. See some background on what exactly? Edit: I am asking because I feel like your post is suggesting in a very roundabout way that perhaps the commenters in the thread are not "authentic" for whatever reason. (If this is the case, I have to condemn the implication in the strongest possible terms.) But perhaps I've misunderstood.
- aluhut 9y agoThis comment section is dragging in some reeealy weird comments. I've seen some of them even disappear (deleted by mods?) which is something I haven't seen here in such a drastic way and short time. I would love to see if this is some directed action. Few people? Links leading to here, etc.
- dang 9y agoNot sure what you mean by 'disappear'. Moderators did routine moderation in this thread, much as we do in any other, especially 'hot' ones. I don't see signs that the users who participated were doing so on false premises. When we do see such things, e.g. users replying to themselves with other accounts to skew discussion, we ban them. We do sometimes mark subthreads to be auto-collapsed, usually when there's something about them that is too far outside the scope of the site. That can be because they're off-topic, but also if they're off-spirit, so to speak, in the sense that the spirit of intellectual curiosity is too absent. When that happens, nastier spirits move in, so moderation is needed.
- gumby 9y agoRead page 2 of the article itself and look up the author. I think the article is credible. More interestingly: so what? (not a flip, but serious question -- there is a what). The article points out that 1> It was long claimed by some that these assurances were given. 2> Turns out that they were in fact given. 3> Then some years later they were abrogated. To some (including me), this is perhaps unfortunate at worst: People make all sorts of statements, sometimes earnestly and sometimes in error. But without formal followup they are just comments. (I happen to think philosophically that expanding NATO was a good idea but felt at the time and now that it was a mistake on practical grounds). So from my perspective this is a "big shrug" of an issue. But to others, particularly some former Warsaw Pact nationals, this is "yet another example of western duplicity". Since nothing was enshrined by treaty, there is no legalism to stand on, but not every society obsesses with legalisms. Just because I disagree with them doesn't mean I should't appreciate their attitude. And the article even goes out of its way to point out that the Soviet Union had the absolute legal right to veto any unification -- which was a result of the SoF agreement and 1948 peace treaties ending WWII in Europe. In retrospect it was a mistake for the USSR not to get this representation "in writing" (BTW similar agreements are not yet in place in Japan BTW, and are unlikely to ever be)
- aluhut 9y agoI don't mean the article. I don't see anything wrong there. However what happened in this comment section within minutes/few hours was very interesting. I haven't seen anything like that since I'm on this board.
- gumby 9y agoThen I didn't understand what you meant by "background" and perhaps the admins won't either. Could you clarify?
- dang 9y agoReasonably close. If you're worried that there is astroturfing or some other kind of organized manipulation going on, I think it's unlikely. There's an easier explanation: HN is a highly international community. People post from many countries, naturally including many Eastern European countries in this thread. These peoples don't see things the same way, for deep and valid reasons, and the issues raised by the topic touch on matters of survival and tribe that have a lot of energy in them.