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You know @dang, I appreciate what you're trying to foster here, but despite that I think that some of the commenters on this site are keeping people away. My f

You know @dang, I appreciate what you're trying to foster here, but despite that I think that some of the commenters on this site are keeping people away. My friend—who is much more restrained in speech than I am—and I were saying that we don't like to come to the 'orange site' as much as before, despite the sometimes excellent discussions, and though it's hard to say precisely why, the reason we came up with is the libertarian slant. You are doing a great job keeping the tone civil, but I think in the end it just leaves us with a community made up of say 33% of people politely saying impolite things. By controlling the tone, could it be that our trolls have just learned to deliver their absolutist, unfeeling and insensitive comments in polite language? We can detect tone but not intent, right? So we control the tone, but the trolls here (and no doubt about it we have them like anywhere else) have just learned to sealion people. And I stand by the provocative nature of the parent post. What if he/she had said 'The difference between a Russian and a Ukrainian is just a line on a map?' That is a politely stated idea. Would a Ukrainian have to take that with restraint too?

dang 3y ago
Certainly the parent post was provocative. That's why I moderated it and asked the user not to post like that again. It doesn't change the fact that you also broke the site guidelines by taking the bait and responding with an outright flamewar post. People need to follow the rules regardless of how provocative another comment is. Otherwise we get a downward spiral (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=downward%20spiral%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). We don't think in terms of civility on HN; I haven't used that word in years except to tell people we don't use that word. We're going for kindness, which is something quite different.

dang 3y ago

Certainly the parent post was provocative. That's why I moderated it and asked the user not to post like that again. It doesn't change the fact that you also broke the site guidelines by taking the bait and responding with an outright flamewar post. People need to follow the rules regardless of how provocative another comment is. Otherwise we get a downward spiral (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=downward%20spiral%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). We don't think in terms of civility on HN; I haven't used that word in years except to tell people we don't use that word. We're going for kindness, which is something quite different.