[dang]

I see a lot of rudeness on Hacker News, but your comments in this thread went past careless rudeness. You were a genuine asshole. It doesn't matter how mistaken the other person was, or how far short of your technical glory they fall, you can't treat others like that here.

Had this been a first offense, I would have posted something like: "If you know more than other people, the thing to do is provide correct information. Then we all learn." And I'd have pointed out that going on about "several flaming errors about basic[s]", without specifying what those errors actually are, is just a putdown that adds no real information.

But you've done this many times before, we've given you many warnings already, and you've ignored them. That indicates that you don't want to use this site as intended, so I've banned your account.

[tacos]

The "several flaming errors" were previously mentioned here and as comments on his website (not by me). To detail them again could also be construed as piling on. You are reading this thread outside the timeline in which it occurred and taking the most negative possible connotation of my actions.

Even in this thread people can't quite decide where my remarks lie on the spectrum. (I assure you this is not some game I'm playing to test the waters.) Likewise in a previous thread your banhammer was overruled by the community.

I personally think you're overreacting (calling me a "genuine asshole" ... really, dang?) but I don't wish to cause you any additional stress by being an unintentional canary in this coal mine. I will however deduct a few points for waiting for the thread to die, zeroing out an upvoted comment containing useful information, then banning my account at 1am on a holiday weekend. I know you abhor off-topic meta discussion but, as a fellow moderator who handles forums far larger and friendlier than this one, that's pretty weak. Good luck, you have my word that I won't reappear under a different name.

[dang]

I didn't call you an asshole; I said you had been one in this thread, which was a carefully circumscribed statement. I doubt very much that you are an asshole or even had a negative intention. But what you did is worse than most misbehavior on HN, because it cuts into what should be the heart of this place: substantive, respectful discussion about others' work. Worse, you'd done it repeatedly already, and been asked repeatedly to stop. That's why I chose a negative interpretation in this case.

As for your procedural complaints, holiday weekends (what are those?) had nothing to do with it, 1am enters the picture because it wasn't until 1am that I had time to deal with yesterday's user flags, and there was no 'waiting for the thread to die'. It takes a long time to write comments like the one explaining why we were banning you. Had I wanted to shove this under the rug, I'd not have bothered.

If you'd like to change your ways and treat others respectfully in comments here from now on, I'm more than happy to unban you. Other users have gone from posting assholish comments on a regular basis (I may even have been one myself) to becoming good citizens of this community. If you want to do that too, you're welcome here. But this requires sincerely accepting the model of how HN is supposed to work and doing your best to abide by it. When we give people repeated warnings and they ignore them, it's hard not to conclude that they have no intention of doing so.

[tacos]

There's a difference between being a prick to fellow community members versus being tough on submissions. I rank myself in the top 5% regarding expertise on a few topics that come up here regularly, and most (not many, most) of the submissions are simply tragic. To enter a thread late with a hundred young people politely chatting about something that's completely wrong or completely plagiarized says quite a bit about your ability to maintain decorum. But I don't think it's quite as flattering regarding your ability to maintain quality.

Googling a machine learning or signal processing technique from 40 years ago, seeing a link to HN on the first page of Google results that gets it wrong, and having the only comment that actually provides counterpoint or correction missing because you pushed a magic button? I can't believe that's the impact either of us are looking for with regards to contributing to world knowledge.

Likewise I increasingly find myself reading the top comment then scrolling down and squinting at the dimmed out bottom comment. Half the time it's someone being an idiot. The rest of the time it's useful counterpoint or something correct but imperfectly phrased. Groupthink and tone-policing-by-committee may be a bigger problem than someone who dares to use the adjective "flaming" to qualify the nature of errors in a submission.

I too hate dealing with the stack of complaints at the end of a long day, and I too hate seeing the same names causing trouble. It certainly is hard to remain impartial given even a small number of people who are obsessed with the "report misbehavior" button or, worse, those who harbor grudges and abuse the feature. In general those people need to toughen up and the people who are causing the grief need to turn it down half a notch. But HN, in technology and in personnel, lacks the nuance necessary to correct and communicate evolving community standards.

There's nothing more boring (and more damaging) than a public debate around a moderator's standards versus a popular user who bumps against the edge on occasion. Out of respect for your work (and my time) I'm stepping out as that's precisely where this is headed. Good luck with the site, I'm all too aware of the effort you put into it.