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dang, you have offended me, and I am thus unrepentant. I am offended because I've witnessed a lot of abuse in my life, and now I see you throwing the book at me
by fennecfoxen 6y ago
dang, you have offended me, and I am thus unrepentant. I am offended because I've witnessed a lot of abuse in my life, and now I see you throwing the book at me minor style-guide violations (like all caps) as a means to defend bullies and their bullying.
I understand that you have many of the same issues to deal with, in terms of thankless moderation. You don't need people harassing you about your decisions on a day to day basis either! But this is important to me, and I think it is important that you are informed that you are being a bully supporting bullies.
As for myself, I'd much, much rather have you ban me from this site forever, rather than apologize in the slightest for any word choice that I have used here today; all of my words are in earnest and snarkless. Please consider this, likewise, an earnest invitation for you to use your discretion in the matter, if you believe it will improve the site. It's only 9538 karma, not that much in the scheme of things.
I would add that if you really want really consistent applications of style-guide things like all caps — and not, say, some tool where you can use style deviations a tool to throw at people when they annoy you — please consider writing a linter for comments offering suggestions to this effect before they are posted.
- dang 6y agoI guess "if you just put in half an ounce of effort [...] try it sometime" seemed snarky to me, and still does. But if you say you didn't mean it that way, I believe you. The main point, though, is that you gave another user's comment an unfair interpretation and then went after them repeatedly (and frankly aggressively) for it. That's not "word choice", let alone spelling. That's about how we treat each other in the community. I'm sorry for having distracted from that by bringing up the allcaps rule, but to my eye (ear?) it did add to the aggressive quality of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26780092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26780092.
- wanderer2323 6y agoIt’s not just ‘snarky’, it’s outright patronizing, and intentionally so.
- dang 6y agoYour comment made me think about some interesting aspects of moderation, which I'll post in case anyone else finds them interesting. (None of this is about the GP comment—I'm just speaking generally.) Even if your claim is true, it generally works better to lay out a weak moderation case rather than to make the strongest one. Also, the stronger the case you mount, the higher the odds that you've misinterpreted someone. Those are two separate issues, btw. The first is about effectiveness, the second is about risk. Taking on higher risk for lower effectiveness is a bad trade, so I try not to do that. Intention is notoriously difficult to assess, especially online. If you make claims about someone's intention, they will usually say "that wasn't my intention". That just distracts from what was concretely wrong about a comment. Moreover, the community—which is the jury—is less likely to support claims about intention than specific things one can point to in a post. So again, it makes moderation less effective while putting it in a riskier position—another bad trade!
- wanderer2323 6y agothank you for sharing this, it's very interesting to read.