6 ms·

I respectfully, and vehemently disagree. Informing someone that they may be drinking too much of their company's Kool-Aid, without knowing what is in it, is a m

I respectfully, and vehemently disagree. Informing someone that they may be drinking too much of their company's Kool-Aid, without knowing what is in it, is a moral obligation. Despicable that you present this as a bannable offense.

dang 5y ago
Sorry, but garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks don't rise to the noble level of moral obligation. The comment plainly broke the site rules. That's not allowed here. If people have noble duties to fulfill, they can do that without breaking the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bakul 5y ago
  I too don't think there is any "moral obligation" involved but I did feel it was perfectly fine to point out what I did. I quoted their "I work for MS" to provide the context for my comment, nothing more.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    You are insinuating astroturfing with no evidence other than "I work at Microsoft" and your personal, albeit somewhat justified, belief of "MS bad". It's not a constructive comment.
  - dang 5y ago
    Sorry, but that's definitely not accurate. You quoted it as part of a personal attack: implying that someone was lying about making a mistake, imputing sinister motivations to them instead, and adding a name-calling putdown into the mix (accusing them of being inside a "reality distortion field", as if you know more about their world than they do). All that is clearly against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I'm sure you didn't intend it that way, but we have to go by effects, not intent (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intent doesn't communicate itself, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate (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...).
- hatware 5y ago
  > garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks That is how you took the comment. I took the comment to be a refreshing dose of reality. Perspective matters a lot.
  - bakul 5y ago
    > I took the comment to be a refreshing dose of reality. This is how I meant it but I could have phrased it or presented it differently as this point got lost at least with the moderators and may be many more. Will try to be more careful in the future. I appreciate your speaking up. And I also appreciate the moderators in trying to keep the discussion standards high. They have a tough job trying to decipher the intent of every commenter.
  - dang 5y ago
    Ok, but anyone could say that about any comment, so from a moderation perspective that is either an empty point or means that we shouldn't moderate anything at all. For practical purposes, someone has to make judgment calls about these things. The way we do that is that we have a set of guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and moderators who make calls about which accounts are breaking them. We try to be as even-handed as possible when we do that, but certainly no one is going to agree with every call we make. Nevertheless, someone has to do the job, and that includes banning accounts when people break the rules and aren't interested in modifying their behavior.
    - hatware 5y ago
      > we shouldn't moderate anything at all Moderation is absolutely necessary. What bothers me is that we are 4 or 5 comments deep, and you still seem to not understand why I spoke up in the first place. The comment you initially replied to did not come off as a personal attack at all to me, in fact, there was nothing personal about it. They took data that was shared with them and used their experience to spit out their own thoughts on the matter. So, I am calling you out for being a bit too zealous with the power you wield. What you do with my perspective being shared with you is up to you, but you're doing a lot to not just ask yourself "Was I being too harsh?" ... Here you have a human telling you that yes, that was too harsh. Calling out the bitter flavor of a corporation's kool-aid is not a personal attack on anyone. Period.

dang 5y ago

Sorry, but garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks don't rise to the noble level of moral obligation. The comment plainly broke the site rules. That's not allowed here. If people have noble duties to fulfill, they can do that without breaking the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bakul 5y ago
I too don't think there is any "moral obligation" involved but I did feel it was perfectly fine to point out what I did. I quoted their "I work for MS" to provide the context for my comment, nothing more.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  You are insinuating astroturfing with no evidence other than "I work at Microsoft" and your personal, albeit somewhat justified, belief of "MS bad". It's not a constructive comment.
- dang 5y ago
  Sorry, but that's definitely not accurate. You quoted it as part of a personal attack: implying that someone was lying about making a mistake, imputing sinister motivations to them instead, and adding a name-calling putdown into the mix (accusing them of being inside a "reality distortion field", as if you know more about their world than they do). All that is clearly against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I'm sure you didn't intend it that way, but we have to go by effects, not intent (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intent doesn't communicate itself, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate (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...).
hatware 5y ago
> garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks That is how you took the comment. I took the comment to be a refreshing dose of reality. Perspective matters a lot.
- bakul 5y ago
  > I took the comment to be a refreshing dose of reality. This is how I meant it but I could have phrased it or presented it differently as this point got lost at least with the moderators and may be many more. Will try to be more careful in the future. I appreciate your speaking up. And I also appreciate the moderators in trying to keep the discussion standards high. They have a tough job trying to decipher the intent of every commenter.
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, but anyone could say that about any comment, so from a moderation perspective that is either an empty point or means that we shouldn't moderate anything at all. For practical purposes, someone has to make judgment calls about these things. The way we do that is that we have a set of guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and moderators who make calls about which accounts are breaking them. We try to be as even-handed as possible when we do that, but certainly no one is going to agree with every call we make. Nevertheless, someone has to do the job, and that includes banning accounts when people break the rules and aren't interested in modifying their behavior.
  - hatware 5y ago
    > we shouldn't moderate anything at all Moderation is absolutely necessary. What bothers me is that we are 4 or 5 comments deep, and you still seem to not understand why I spoke up in the first place. The comment you initially replied to did not come off as a personal attack at all to me, in fact, there was nothing personal about it. They took data that was shared with them and used their experience to spit out their own thoughts on the matter. So, I am calling you out for being a bit too zealous with the power you wield. What you do with my perspective being shared with you is up to you, but you're doing a lot to not just ask yourself "Was I being too harsh?" ... Here you have a human telling you that yes, that was too harsh. Calling out the bitter flavor of a corporation's kool-aid is not a personal attack on anyone. Period.