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@dang, I appreciate all your work moderating here, I'm sure it's pretty thankless at the best of times, but you do keep this place one of the best places on the

@dang, I appreciate all your work moderating here, I'm sure it's pretty thankless at the best of times, but you do keep this place one of the best places on the internet for technical discussion. So thank you for that. That being said, I disagree with the assessment of my comment. Those of us (and there were many) who warned about this escalating when Trump was censored and deplatformed were downvoted and flagged at the time, amidst lots of crowing and victory clapping from people who fully believed the censorship only applied to one individual and was acceptable. We've seen in the past 2 weeks a huge escalation - the British Socialist pages on FB, other left-leaning sites, and now of course watering holes related to WallStreetBets. We're fortunate to see this history happen in real time, so hopefully we can course-correct, as our forebears did, but without the longer timeline and through much more horrible circumstances. Facebook used its power unilaterally to shut down yet another group of people. Whether we agree with the opinions of that group or not is not the point - the fact that this can happen, is happening, and is being supported by large swathes of people who should be more aware of where this path leads us, is very worrying. Reminding people that just a few weeks ago, when concern about the Trump censorship was resoundingly dismissed, that that was the same as the censorship of other groups today, is important. I'll continue to do that, because we need to deviate from this path we as a collective seem to be walking down. Respectfully,

dang 6y ago
If you had posted this explanation in the first place then it wouldn't have been flamebait. The problem with what you did post is that it was snarky and unsubstantive, as well as a partisan provocation. Certainly that breaks the site guidelines—more than one of them, in fact. It's fascinating to me how common it is that people's second comment (e.g. after a moderation reply) will give a detailed substantive expression of what they actually meant. I think we all assume that what's in our mind will come across in our comments, but actually it doesn't come across by itself—it needs to be formulated explicitly, as you did in your later reply. If you don't share it explicitly, but only give a quick pointer to it, people will fill that in with what's in their mind, which is a huge range of possible interpretations, many of which are inflammatory or even attacks, whether you meant it that way or not. Commenters will respond to what they perceive you as saying (and feeling, and thinking, and doing), and it's your responsibility to minimize the gap between that and what you actually mean. (I don't mean just you, of course. We all need to do this.) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disambiguate%20burden%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

dang 6y ago

If you had posted this explanation in the first place then it wouldn't have been flamebait. The problem with what you did post is that it was snarky and unsubstantive, as well as a partisan provocation. Certainly that breaks the site guidelines—more than one of them, in fact. It's fascinating to me how common it is that people's second comment (e.g. after a moderation reply) will give a detailed substantive expression of what they actually meant. I think we all assume that what's in our mind will come across in our comments, but actually it doesn't come across by itself—it needs to be formulated explicitly, as you did in your later reply. If you don't share it explicitly, but only give a quick pointer to it, people will fill that in with what's in their mind, which is a huge range of possible interpretations, many of which are inflammatory or even attacks, whether you meant it that way or not. Commenters will respond to what they perceive you as saying (and feeling, and thinking, and doing), and it's your responsibility to minimize the gap between that and what you actually mean. (I don't mean just you, of course. We all need to do this.) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disambiguate%20burden%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...