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They? lol Look, I don't 100% agree with that either, and I don't really want to "defend" someone else's comments from 2 years ago. I just think it's strange to

by PKop 2y ago

They? lol Look, I don't 100% agree with that either, and I don't really want to "defend" someone else's comments from 2 years ago. I just think it's strange to ban people just for having an naïve or off-colour opinion, esp. if they're otherwise not causing any problems.

arp242 2y ago
It's five months ago, not two years. And it's not an "off-colour opinion", it's just assholery. My point was that this isn't a one-off "everyone has a bad day"-type thing, but a consistent pattern that's been going on for months and that it's frequent and severe enough for people to take notice. If you want to have vaguely serious discussions then you need to treat people with a modicum of respect, otherwise all the people wanting to have a serious discussion will just leave and what you end up with is just the assholes swimming in a sea of cynicism, negativity, and general assholery. So yes, they're absolutely causing problems.
- PKop 2y ago
  It's a fine line, but passionate high energy discussion makes this place more interesting than if people with strong opinions were banned. It would become boring, "safe", and conventional. Everyone would be saying the same things. A wise man once said: "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression." Maybe if people could be muted or something would be compromise.
  - arp242 2y ago
    There is no discussion. What are you even supposed to "discuss" on the comment that started this thread? This isn't someone engaging in a bit of an aggressive way, it's merely an expression of negativity and nothing else. You don't see me crapping up every TypeScript or PHP thread with that, and when I do it's 1) on-topic, and 2) a criticism that has more substance than "bruh-huh, TypeScript bad". Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37765713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37765713 – this is something you can agree or disagree with and have a serious conversation about. "Go sux, just use .NET" ... not so much. Especially when that same discussion recurs on every damn thread because this user has posted dozens of those types of comments. It gets very tedious very quickly. And muting people isn't really a solution; any new user who hasn't built up a "block list" will just see a community of assholes, so it's not really a substitute. Even with blocklist features, there needs to be a baseline of acceptable behaviour.

by PKop 2y ago

arp242 2y ago

It's five months ago, not two years. And it's not an "off-colour opinion", it's just assholery. My point was that this isn't a one-off "everyone has a bad day"-type thing, but a consistent pattern that's been going on for months and that it's frequent and severe enough for people to take notice. If you want to have vaguely serious discussions then you need to treat people with a modicum of respect, otherwise all the people wanting to have a serious discussion will just leave and what you end up with is just the assholes swimming in a sea of cynicism, negativity, and general assholery. So yes, they're absolutely causing problems.

PKop 2y ago
It's a fine line, but passionate high energy discussion makes this place more interesting than if people with strong opinions were banned. It would become boring, "safe", and conventional. Everyone would be saying the same things. A wise man once said: "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression." Maybe if people could be muted or something would be compromise.
- arp242 2y ago
  There is no discussion. What are you even supposed to "discuss" on the comment that started this thread? This isn't someone engaging in a bit of an aggressive way, it's merely an expression of negativity and nothing else. You don't see me crapping up every TypeScript or PHP thread with that, and when I do it's 1) on-topic, and 2) a criticism that has more substance than "bruh-huh, TypeScript bad". Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37765713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37765713 – this is something you can agree or disagree with and have a serious conversation about. "Go sux, just use .NET" ... not so much. Especially when that same discussion recurs on every damn thread because this user has posted dozens of those types of comments. It gets very tedious very quickly. And muting people isn't really a solution; any new user who hasn't built up a "block list" will just see a community of assholes, so it's not really a substitute. Even with blocklist features, there needs to be a baseline of acceptable behaviour.