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Sorry, but I have to disagree. The sentence only has no information in it I'd you choose to blindly look at the words in a vacuum. But if you think about what h

Sorry, but I have to disagree. The sentence only has no information in it I'd you choose to blindly look at the words in a vacuum. But if you think about what he said, what he meant, the tone has a ton of information, the most obvious is a drop frustration of the empty promises and frequent shut downs that is all too common in recent startups. I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. And I'm not sure it would be better off without it. Obviously you can disagree, and given your position perhaps my opinion doesn't really matter, but to say it has no information is just being dishonest, and I say that in the nicest way possible.

dang 12y ago
> I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. I see two conversations here. One is about users feeling betrayed by acquisitions and whether that could be mitigated contractually. That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. The other conversation is about who is being a fuckwad, and hardly counts as "worthwhile". Unfortunately, it is what such rudeness leads to, and it only gets worse. Keep in mind that we're not talking about rudeness in general. We're talking about its effect on the already precarious balance of a particular optionally-anonymous internet forum. The argument here isn't ethical so much as empirical.
- Helianthus 12y ago
  > That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. How can you say that with any certainty? The only real example you have of this kind of conversation happened right here; which is to say, you have pretty strong evidence that the conversation did require abusiveness to be created. You as a moderator are making value judgments on what should be discussed; you're not clearly specifying rules of engagement in general, and in this topic you've proven you couldn't enforce them even if you had them written down. You know what referring to the conversation about who's the fuckwad does? It validates me, because I was one that made a point of being part of that conversation. It tells me that that conversation was, in fact, worthwhile: because it got your attention. And now I'm posting with (what's essentially) my HN main, a shadowbanned account, because I'm pretty sure that you'll still see it. With the topic dying, with your post only a few hours old, I'm basically given a free private message to you. (You can also definitely track down who I really am now, but that doesn't really frighten me.) So I can say: we're not really on a different page on the "already precarious balance" here. Despite my hatred for this community, I still care about it. (That's practically what hatred means!) What I'm sure we disagree about is perhaps what's encapsulated by this topic. The two conversations you see are actually intimately connected, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they inform each other. I think the Valley has a serious problem with positivity. You can't be negative in the networking world, and what that leads to is a culture where legitimate negative criticism is shut down. And that's where I fought today, and where you fought; the balance is that the negative criticism won the day. Which is why I say that your moderation is ultimately powerless. I'm still here, writing to you. Even if for some programmatic reason you never read this, even if you've made an effort to not hear specific voices, I still exist. And even outside my participation, the point was abusively made, because those forces make their point regardless of this chatter, and it might just be true that damage is the only real way of understanding and coming to terms with change. If talking about who is a fuckwad isn't worthwhile, why does so much of your moderation involve finding fuckwads and terminating their participation? This is a good conversation, solely because it happened. Because I can drag you into it no matter how elitist you're acting. (And I don't really think you're nearly as elitist as pg was; you've gone good clarifying work on title renaming, but you inherited a stupidly tough position.) In fact, I suspect I'm writing this just to tell you how screwed you are.

dang 12y ago

> I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. I see two conversations here. One is about users feeling betrayed by acquisitions and whether that could be mitigated contractually. That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. The other conversation is about who is being a fuckwad, and hardly counts as "worthwhile". Unfortunately, it is what such rudeness leads to, and it only gets worse. Keep in mind that we're not talking about rudeness in general. We're talking about its effect on the already precarious balance of a particular optionally-anonymous internet forum. The argument here isn't ethical so much as empirical.

Helianthus 12y ago
> That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. How can you say that with any certainty? The only real example you have of this kind of conversation happened right here; which is to say, you have pretty strong evidence that the conversation did require abusiveness to be created. You as a moderator are making value judgments on what should be discussed; you're not clearly specifying rules of engagement in general, and in this topic you've proven you couldn't enforce them even if you had them written down. You know what referring to the conversation about who's the fuckwad does? It validates me, because I was one that made a point of being part of that conversation. It tells me that that conversation was, in fact, worthwhile: because it got your attention. And now I'm posting with (what's essentially) my HN main, a shadowbanned account, because I'm pretty sure that you'll still see it. With the topic dying, with your post only a few hours old, I'm basically given a free private message to you. (You can also definitely track down who I really am now, but that doesn't really frighten me.) So I can say: we're not really on a different page on the "already precarious balance" here. Despite my hatred for this community, I still care about it. (That's practically what hatred means!) What I'm sure we disagree about is perhaps what's encapsulated by this topic. The two conversations you see are actually intimately connected, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they inform each other. I think the Valley has a serious problem with positivity. You can't be negative in the networking world, and what that leads to is a culture where legitimate negative criticism is shut down. And that's where I fought today, and where you fought; the balance is that the negative criticism won the day. Which is why I say that your moderation is ultimately powerless. I'm still here, writing to you. Even if for some programmatic reason you never read this, even if you've made an effort to not hear specific voices, I still exist. And even outside my participation, the point was abusively made, because those forces make their point regardless of this chatter, and it might just be true that damage is the only real way of understanding and coming to terms with change. If talking about who is a fuckwad isn't worthwhile, why does so much of your moderation involve finding fuckwads and terminating their participation? This is a good conversation, solely because it happened. Because I can drag you into it no matter how elitist you're acting. (And I don't really think you're nearly as elitist as pg was; you've gone good clarifying work on title renaming, but you inherited a stupidly tough position.) In fact, I suspect I'm writing this just to tell you how screwed you are.