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There’s a strong, intentional skew in their enforcement: dang has previously said that they’re more critical of people who perturb the groupthink, and take act

There’s a strong, intentional skew in their enforcement: dang has previously said that they’re more critical of people who perturb the groupthink, and take action against them for things people supporting popular opinions would be excused for. That’s what it means when they say they censor to keep “civility”: if the groupthink finds you disruptive, you will be silenced by arbitrary application of rules others (who subscribe to groupthink) are excused for — and in this way, an insistence on civility always favors groupthink. The pretense of censoring for civility here is merely dishonest gaslighting about their ideological policing, in favor of groupthink. It’s precisely the same kind of dishonesty you see in YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook’s censoring of conservative voices: hyperpartisans screech, and complicit moderates use that as a pretense to enact their biases.

dang 7y ago
I've not said that. If you're going to make such a claim, you should provide a link so readers can make up their own minds. The other claims you make aren't really falsifiable, though I can tell you we go out of our way not to moderate HN based on ideology, and I can also tell you that for whatever ideological position you'd care to name, people loudly complain that we're biased against it.
- FakeComments 7y ago
  You have, to me, in reply to contentious things I’ve said. Repeatedly.
  - dang 7y ago
    All my replies to your comments can be found in this subthread, and plainly do not match your description. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345439
    - FakeComments 7y ago
      > Especially: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." > dang has previously said that they’re more critical of people who perturb the groupthink, and take action against them for things people supporting popular opinions would be excused for. Your entire moderation policy is based around precisely what I claimed, as you yourself stated: the arbitrary application of increased standards for comments which disrupt groupthink, or to use a euphemism, are “divisive”.
      - dang 7y ago
        That guideline is based on the evidence of what happens when people don't follow it. That's the opposite of arbitrary. You're effectively calling the rule "no fires in a dry forest" arbitrary because it doesn't apply to all forests. Uncivil comments about divisive topics lead to flamewars. Flamebait comments don't "disrupt groupthink"; they reinforce it, because what flamewars do is reinforce pre-existing opinions with jacked-up intensity. If you want to change other people's minds, you need to actually reach those people. Verbally tasing the other side makes them go rigid and think whatever they thought before, just more angrily.
        FakeComments 7y ago
        > That guideline is based on the evidence of what happens when people don't follow it. That's the opposite of arbitrary. I didn’t mean to imply that the rule was arbitrarily selected, merely that your application of it was arbitrary — that it, at the sole discretion of a small group of people, without guiding rules, and without systematic review for p, eg, bias. Force, such as bans, applied in an arbitrary manner is inherently tyrannical — and your appeals to civility a rote recitation of a millennia old justification for tyranny. Tyrants are never merely enforcing their biases on others — it’s always for the greater purpose! Having been a member of this community for a while, my reply would be that flame war groupthink is better than this groupthink: flame wars can occasionally change minds and show the diversity of extant opinions — while your groupthink preserving censorship distorts people’s view of the diversity of opinions while leading to no more changed minds, and is therefore strictly worse.

dang 7y ago

I've not said that. If you're going to make such a claim, you should provide a link so readers can make up their own minds. The other claims you make aren't really falsifiable, though I can tell you we go out of our way not to moderate HN based on ideology, and I can also tell you that for whatever ideological position you'd care to name, people loudly complain that we're biased against it.

FakeComments 7y ago
You have, to me, in reply to contentious things I’ve said. Repeatedly.
- dang 7y ago
  All my replies to your comments can be found in this subthread, and plainly do not match your description. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345439
  - FakeComments 7y ago
    > Especially: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." > dang has previously said that they’re more critical of people who perturb the groupthink, and take action against them for things people supporting popular opinions would be excused for. Your entire moderation policy is based around precisely what I claimed, as you yourself stated: the arbitrary application of increased standards for comments which disrupt groupthink, or to use a euphemism, are “divisive”.
    - dang 7y ago
      That guideline is based on the evidence of what happens when people don't follow it. That's the opposite of arbitrary. You're effectively calling the rule "no fires in a dry forest" arbitrary because it doesn't apply to all forests. Uncivil comments about divisive topics lead to flamewars. Flamebait comments don't "disrupt groupthink"; they reinforce it, because what flamewars do is reinforce pre-existing opinions with jacked-up intensity. If you want to change other people's minds, you need to actually reach those people. Verbally tasing the other side makes them go rigid and think whatever they thought before, just more angrily.
      - FakeComments 7y ago
        > That guideline is based on the evidence of what happens when people don't follow it. That's the opposite of arbitrary. I didn’t mean to imply that the rule was arbitrarily selected, merely that your application of it was arbitrary — that it, at the sole discretion of a small group of people, without guiding rules, and without systematic review for p, eg, bias. Force, such as bans, applied in an arbitrary manner is inherently tyrannical — and your appeals to civility a rote recitation of a millennia old justification for tyranny. Tyrants are never merely enforcing their biases on others — it’s always for the greater purpose! Having been a member of this community for a while, my reply would be that flame war groupthink is better than this groupthink: flame wars can occasionally change minds and show the diversity of extant opinions — while your groupthink preserving censorship distorts people’s view of the diversity of opinions while leading to no more changed minds, and is therefore strictly worse.