[lkrubner]

Do remember that this guy wrote:

"I’ve more or less kept my mouth shut about some of the dumb and plain evil stuff that goes on in the Rails community. As things would happen though I’d take notes, collect logs, and started writing this little essay. As soon as I was stable and didn’t need Ruby on Rails to survive I told myself I’d revamp my blog and expose these fucks."

and:

"After Mongrel I couldn’t get a gang of monkeys to rape me, so forget any jobs. Sure people would contact me for their tiny little start-ups, but I’d eventually catch on that they just want to use me to implement their ideas. Their ideas were horrendously lame. I swear if someone says they’re starting a social network I’m gonna beat them with the heel of my shoe."

So that is very much his style of writing.

[dang]

I don't think bringing out a list of generically outrageous things someone said in the past rises to the level of discourse we're trying for here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11727718 and marked it off-topic.

[lkrubner]

The man has a long history of writing angry rants. You don't think that would influence how people might read his current rant? You don't think the readers of Hacker News might like to know about his past history of similar behavior? You don't think it helps interpret the level of anger in his current rant?

[dang]

I do think all those things. But the cost of moving in the direction of personal vendettas or witch hunts is higher than the benefits you listed (if benefits they are).

I don't mean that's what you intended, but that's the direction it points in, which it isn't in the long-term interests of HN to allow.

[davidw]

He had this big rant about Debian that was about Debian trying to lock people in because of 'business' or something absurd like that. Debian is a non-profit! I found it irritating because it wasn't even "he's being a jerk, but he's right". It was just plain wrong.