Comments like these, and you've unfortunately posted many others like them, are not ok here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47612036

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47580543

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47561644

We ban accounts that keep doing this, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

We've never tried to fully specify what these rules mean because (1) that's impossible, (2) it would give the misleading impression that whatever isn't listed in the specification must be ok, and (3) we don't want to be bureaucrats. HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place, and always has been. I don't think it's any kind of stretch to say that advocating for violence is against the intended spirit of this site.

I'm not sure whether HN comments have gotten worse in general - these things fluctuate a lot, over long stretches, and the fundamentals are more or less the same over time.

Despite my emotional statement, I'm not really thinking of packing it in. HN obviously does more good than harm, even though it's popular for people to say the opposite (and even part of the game to say it).

For example, consider the word "remove" and the many different associations it can have.

In this case, the comment (assuming I didn't misread it, which is always possible) seemed obviously to be endorsing specific violence against a specific person and indeed wishing for it to escalate. That's a kind of violence in its own right, and a poison that we don't want here.

> Being upset about samas front gate

To write that, you must have missed what I was upset about. What upset me was the community response to the violence (which in physical terms was inconsequential, and certainly doesn't compare to the worst things going on in this world): piling on and egging each other into escalating rage towards the target of the violence, while obviously feeling good about it. In other words, a mob. I don't like mobs.

The mob dynamic is the same whether the target is a rich person who many people happen to dislike, or a much weaker person. The idea that "it's ok if the target is $so-and-so" is abhorrent—a self-deception that allows us to deny, excuse, and enjoy our share of the violence we all partake in as human beings, while projecting it onto (and into) other people whom we call bad and evil.

Even though I know that this is human nature it upsets me when it shows up in a community that I'm responsible for, and it was showing up badly in this thread when I first saw it last night.

"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence. If you ignore the most important one, of course you'll end up with a distorted view.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> this thread is not really exceptional in any way

It was different when I first saw it last night - it was, as I've explained in other comments, very much a mob. But I did a bunch of the usual moderation things that we do to try to dampen such dynamics. (The part where I also expressed feelings about it was different, and not so usual. I've done that a few times over the years, but mostly try to process it offline.)

As for the implication that we only cared about how bad that thread was because of the specific individual involved, yes, that would also be pretty disgusting—but the fact is that I've done, and do, the same moderation on countless occasions, large and small, and it doesn't depend on who the target is. In fact it isn't about the target at all—it's about the commnuity, and the poisoning effect that such threads have on us ourselves.

HN has had many major frontpage threads about Israel/Gaza. We haven't been suppressing the topic. I gather that you feel it should have more representation than it does, but that is a different issue; everyone feels that way about the topic they feel strongest about. Incidentally, the people on the opposite side from you believe that we're nefariously suppressing things in exactly the opposite direction, and direct their ire at us in much the same way that you have. (To put it crudely, we get hammered for antisemitism from one angle and genocide from another.)

You seem to be assuming that I'm not aware of what awful things people post in those threads. On the contrary, I'm sickeningly familiar with them and have banned many accounts for breaking the site guidelines there. If you know of a case that we missed—entirely possible, since we don't see everything—I'd like to see links. But you shouldn't assume that the moderators must be on the opposite side of an issue from you, or have no human feelings about it, when you happen to see something bad on HN. The likeliest explanation is simply that we haven't seen it yet.

There are many ways for a thread to be bad. You're right that people hurling tribal abuse at each other is one of those. However, even in the worst of those threads I don't usually see people justifying or celebrating specific violence against specific persons, and if I did see that, I would intervene. I think what shocked me in the current case was how the thread quickly turned into a mob dynamic with commenters vying to outdo each other, no doubt feeling that it is just fine to do that—indeed, righteous—because the object of the rage was $rich-ceo.

What I was saying is that a mob dynamic like that is not ok on HN even if the target is $rich-ceo. It's not "you can't do this on HN because the target is rich and powerful". It's "you can't do this on HN to anyone, even if they happen to be rich and powerful".

I gather that you won't believe me, since you've built an entire case on assuming the opposite. All I can tell you that it is a deep misunderstanding. I've intervened in many such threads many times, regardless of who it was that the commenters were celebrating harm to, or attempted harm.

As for the notion of treating one incident of failed violence as more important than mass slaughter of children, I agree with you that that would be grotesque.

I said I was ashamed, not surprised. It isn't surprising, and the feeling comes with the job every day. The difference is that I said something about it this time; I occasionally do, as long as it isn't often. Maybe once a year or so.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

The APL Source Code (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34064480 - Dec 2022 (58 comments)

As I explained to these other users*, I'm not going to ban you right now because this thread is a mob, and mobs derange people and I don't think that any of us (including me) is immune from this. But please don't ever post anything like this, or remotely close to this, ever again to HN.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728362 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728150

I'm going to interpret that as meaning that we do our job ok, just not instantenously—which would make sense, given that we're human and that would be humanly impossible.

> There was horrific racism on display right here

If there were any cases of that which we didn't do anything about, it would be because we didn't see them. I can't read everything that gets posted to Hacker News any more than you can; see "humanly impossible" above. But I'd like to see specific links.

> Perhaps it just seems part of the background noise to you

It does not "seem like part of the background noise" to me. What it "seems like" is wrenching my intenstines into an agonizing state on a regular basis and then driving a spike through them.

As I said to voidhorse (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728150), this is obviously the kind of thing we ban people for—as anyone who reads https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html should know; but given that this thread is a mob and mobs derange people, I'm going to cut you some slack and not ban you. Just please don't do anything like this on Hacker News again.

> For a social scientist, you're either a really poor one, a poorly read one or one with a complete inability to read the room.

Personal attacks are also unwelcome here. Lashing out at a fellow community member is mean and shameful, and also undermines whatever argument you were making.

The world I have lived in for longer than 10 years is HN. I'm gut-wrenchingly familiar with the worst things that people post here—probably more than anyone, simply because it's my job.

If you can dig up a single example of a thread this bad that we knew about and didn't do anything about, I'd be shocked, because it would go against everything I believe and feel. Perhaps you can, nonetheless? If so, let's see it.

Here's what I mean by "this bad", if you want to calibrate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427

The number of people who feel that anything at all is justified if it reinforces their feelings—particularly their angriest and most vicious feelings—is so large that it's clear that it is human nature in action, and that makes me yearn for a cool and heavy rock to crawl under, with moist earth to sink into.

Mobs foaming at the mouth, triggered by a disturbed person's violence into a mutually foaming frenzy, is not an intended use of this site. I shouldn't have to tell any of you this.