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>"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Eschew flamebait." I mean, tbh, these are rather vague gu

>"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Eschew flamebait." I mean, tbh, these are rather vague guidelines. You could say my comments are "thoughtful and substantive." I made an observation that the corruption in the article had many responsible parties and people from all walks of life participating in it, more than what would normally happen in the states. The fact that so many people participated does say something about the culture in general. As for "eschew flamebait"... how much flame did this post cause? There's definitely a bit a flame, but I would say overall a flamewar didn't happen. So basically you're wrong. You use your "experience" to justify the warning but I would say your experience is wrong for this case... most of the sub threads aren't things that I would classify as flame. I get where you come from though. It's hard to see from a distance whether a comment will cause a forrest fire. Maybe put out the forest fire if you see one starting, but don't ban the use of matches all together.

dang 6y ago
"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it. I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, based on years of experience and god knows how many thousands of cases of dealing with this. The issue is the expected value of the subthread: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22expected%20value%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you're going to comment on a topic this inflammatory, you need to include way more flame retardant in your comment. Two helpful ways to do that are (1) be clear and explicit about your intent, and (2) speak about your own personal experience.
- leafboi 6y ago
  >"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it. You didn't contain anything. You didn't even respond to the subthread where people were were actually starting fires. You just threw a warning at me after most of the conversation already played out. Not only did a fire not happen, you showed up after most people left the premises. >I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, Go ahead and pull rank man. You can even ban me if you wanted to, it's your right. I'm not trying to say anything to the contrary. The servers are based in the states, but they're private property so you are 100% in your rights to do whatever you want. >The issue is the expected value of the subthread No offense, but your "years of experience" or "expected value" is equivalent to your "biased opinion" because, as other people in this thread and I have shown, we had another "biased opinion" on what that probability distribution for the expected value looked like. To me it doesn't look like flame bait and it looks like their's plenty of flame retardant as well. Either way, none of these predictions or opinions really matter in the face of what actually occurred. The expected value of a post is a moving target that eventually coalesces into the actual demonstrated value of the post. The actual value of this post demonstrates that no flamewar occurred. So you were wrong while other people and I were right. Whatever... if you want me to add more "flame retardant" next time I'll add it. It doesn't change the fact that for this thread you showed up onsite with a firehose to put out a fire that never occurred.

dang 6y ago

"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it. I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, based on years of experience and god knows how many thousands of cases of dealing with this. The issue is the expected value of the subthread: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22expected%20value%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you're going to comment on a topic this inflammatory, you need to include way more flame retardant in your comment. Two helpful ways to do that are (1) be clear and explicit about your intent, and (2) speak about your own personal experience.

leafboi 6y ago
>"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it. You didn't contain anything. You didn't even respond to the subthread where people were were actually starting fires. You just threw a warning at me after most of the conversation already played out. Not only did a fire not happen, you showed up after most people left the premises. >I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, Go ahead and pull rank man. You can even ban me if you wanted to, it's your right. I'm not trying to say anything to the contrary. The servers are based in the states, but they're private property so you are 100% in your rights to do whatever you want. >The issue is the expected value of the subthread No offense, but your "years of experience" or "expected value" is equivalent to your "biased opinion" because, as other people in this thread and I have shown, we had another "biased opinion" on what that probability distribution for the expected value looked like. To me it doesn't look like flame bait and it looks like their's plenty of flame retardant as well. Either way, none of these predictions or opinions really matter in the face of what actually occurred. The expected value of a post is a moving target that eventually coalesces into the actual demonstrated value of the post. The actual value of this post demonstrates that no flamewar occurred. So you were wrong while other people and I were right. Whatever... if you want me to add more "flame retardant" next time I'll add it. It doesn't change the fact that for this thread you showed up onsite with a firehose to put out a fire that never occurred.