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> This is a fine comment except for the end. You unfortunately have a habit of taking swipes at people you're talking to here. Could you please up your game a

> This is a fine comment except for the end. You unfortunately have a habit of taking swipes at people you're talking to here. Could you please up your game a bit and omit those? Your comments tend to be quite good otherwise, but it's not ok to break the site guidelines like this. I'll admit that that sentence is a bit dismissive, but it's a deflection in response to a comment which is itself dismissive and aggressive towards me and which is trying to bait an unnecessary argument over an uncharitable reading of my original (innocuous) statement. Hopefully that's evident in context. I'll be honest: there are usernames I recognize by name. There are users who have made a habit of posting aggressive, dismissive, snarky replies to even my blandest comments, often trying to bait an argument and drawing the conversation towards a specific tangent. There are some users who post comments that are "civil" in tone but express racist or homophobic sentiments towards me. (In some cases, it's plainly obvious that they're trying to continue personal grudges from other threads; they've linked directly to the previous thread or copied sections of text verbatim!) In my view, either one goes against the spirit of the guidelines for this website - fostering productive conversation - as well as the letter. Yes, it's true that trying to deflect or cut off an argument like this is a defensive response. But it's a defensive response that's been learned over years of participating on this site, and from seeing moderators take no visible action against people "civilly" directing bigoted comments at individuals, while publicly taking issue with the people defending themselves (albeit impolitely) from those exact comments in the same thread. While that might not be the intention, and while there may be reasons for this (e.g. engaging visibly with the people likely to be receptive feedback as opposed to those who won't), it's the pattern that I (and others) have noticed. I very much appreciate the time and effort that you (and others) put in to running this site, which is exactly why I'm taking the time to write this comment and explain the broader context.

dang 7y ago
Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. That's the way we end up in a downward spiral, since it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse. Funnily enough, my comment upthread originally included the statement that this has been so consistent a problem with your comments that I actually anticipate it when I see your username. I took that out because I didn't want it to seem like I was picking on you personally. But since you mention "there are usernames I recognize by name", maybe it's helpful information. It's much harder to see these patterns in oneself than it is in others, especially the people we most disagree with. The only way to fix that is to take on a higher standard for yourself—not because a higher standard applies to you, but as a compensation for the strong bias to always see the other person as the greater problem. We all have that bias, so we all need to apply that fix. It's a community-level effort. That said, if there are other accounts repeatedly breaking HN's rules, we'd certainly appreciate hearing about it at hn@ycombinator.com. It's not true that we take no visible action against people posting bigoted comments. We do that a lot. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, so we rely on users to help. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... You can help by flagging such comments, so that moderators are more likely to see them. I took a look at the history of comments you've flagged, and in most cases there ended up being visible evidence of moderation. In egregious cases, it's best to email hn@ycombinator.com, because usually that will lead to swifter action.
- chimeracoder 7y ago
  > Funnily enough, my comment upthread originally included the statement that this has been so consistent a problem in the past that I actually anticipate it when I see your username. I took that out because I didn't want it to seem like I was picking on you personally. But since you mention "there are usernames I recognize by name", maybe it's helpful information. Yes, I had seen that, which is why I mentioned that in my comment. > Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. That's the way we end up in a downward spiral, since it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse. I understand, and I'm not saying that it makes it okay. I'm explaining that, when people see patterns in which violations of rules get called out publicly and which don't, it sends a message. The reason I'm letting you know because I believe that's not the message that your team intends to send (if it were, I wouldn't be bothering). > It's not true that we take no visible action against people posting bigoted comments. I've personally done that hundreds if not thousands of times. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. The last time you and I interacted on here (Jan 2019) was in a thread where you took issue with a snarky comment I wrote, and I responded by pointing out the same thing - that I was responding to a person who was even more aggressive, clearly acting in bad faith, and accusing me of "racism" for explaining why a post was offensive to people of certain ethnic backgrounds (including my own). My comment apparently warranted a public moderator response; the parent that I responded to apparently did not. The other was eventually flagged, but only much later - long after the post had fallen off the front page. Perhaps moderators don't necessarily read the parent post when responding to a comment, but because most readers assume that mods do, a situation like that makes it look like moderators are condoning one type of behavior over the other. It doesn't help that, in any system that relies on user flags for reporting behavior, users from minority backgrounds ultimately are flagged at a higher rate, even if they adhere to the rules the same proportion of the time. There's peer-reviewed research that's explained this phenomenon, but most of it boils down to the obvious dynamic: people are less likely to report objectionable behavior if they agree with the content, and people are more likely to disagree with content that openly expresses viewpoints from minority groups. > You can help by flagging those comments, so that moderators are more likely to see them, and in egregious cases it's helpful to email hn@ycombinator.com. I have typically avoided flagging these comments because I've (perhaps incorrectly) been under the impression that they're not actioned - in all the years I've been on this site, I don't think I've ever seen moderators publicly calling out this sort of "civil bigotry" that I'm describing. However, if that's not the case, I'll make note of that and will flag those from now on instead of responding myself.

dang 7y ago

Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. That's the way we end up in a downward spiral, since it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse. Funnily enough, my comment upthread originally included the statement that this has been so consistent a problem with your comments that I actually anticipate it when I see your username. I took that out because I didn't want it to seem like I was picking on you personally. But since you mention "there are usernames I recognize by name", maybe it's helpful information. It's much harder to see these patterns in oneself than it is in others, especially the people we most disagree with. The only way to fix that is to take on a higher standard for yourself—not because a higher standard applies to you, but as a compensation for the strong bias to always see the other person as the greater problem. We all have that bias, so we all need to apply that fix. It's a community-level effort. That said, if there are other accounts repeatedly breaking HN's rules, we'd certainly appreciate hearing about it at hn@ycombinator.com. It's not true that we take no visible action against people posting bigoted comments. We do that a lot. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, so we rely on users to help. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... You can help by flagging such comments, so that moderators are more likely to see them. I took a look at the history of comments you've flagged, and in most cases there ended up being visible evidence of moderation. In egregious cases, it's best to email hn@ycombinator.com, because usually that will lead to swifter action.

chimeracoder 7y ago
> Funnily enough, my comment upthread originally included the statement that this has been so consistent a problem in the past that I actually anticipate it when I see your username. I took that out because I didn't want it to seem like I was picking on you personally. But since you mention "there are usernames I recognize by name", maybe it's helpful information. Yes, I had seen that, which is why I mentioned that in my comment. > Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. That's the way we end up in a downward spiral, since it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse. I understand, and I'm not saying that it makes it okay. I'm explaining that, when people see patterns in which violations of rules get called out publicly and which don't, it sends a message. The reason I'm letting you know because I believe that's not the message that your team intends to send (if it were, I wouldn't be bothering). > It's not true that we take no visible action against people posting bigoted comments. I've personally done that hundreds if not thousands of times. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. The last time you and I interacted on here (Jan 2019) was in a thread where you took issue with a snarky comment I wrote, and I responded by pointing out the same thing - that I was responding to a person who was even more aggressive, clearly acting in bad faith, and accusing me of "racism" for explaining why a post was offensive to people of certain ethnic backgrounds (including my own). My comment apparently warranted a public moderator response; the parent that I responded to apparently did not. The other was eventually flagged, but only much later - long after the post had fallen off the front page. Perhaps moderators don't necessarily read the parent post when responding to a comment, but because most readers assume that mods do, a situation like that makes it look like moderators are condoning one type of behavior over the other. It doesn't help that, in any system that relies on user flags for reporting behavior, users from minority backgrounds ultimately are flagged at a higher rate, even if they adhere to the rules the same proportion of the time. There's peer-reviewed research that's explained this phenomenon, but most of it boils down to the obvious dynamic: people are less likely to report objectionable behavior if they agree with the content, and people are more likely to disagree with content that openly expresses viewpoints from minority groups. > You can help by flagging those comments, so that moderators are more likely to see them, and in egregious cases it's helpful to email hn@ycombinator.com. I have typically avoided flagging these comments because I've (perhaps incorrectly) been under the impression that they're not actioned - in all the years I've been on this site, I don't think I've ever seen moderators publicly calling out this sort of "civil bigotry" that I'm describing. However, if that's not the case, I'll make note of that and will flag those from now on instead of responding myself.