| You did considerably more than anyone else to turn this thread into a wretched flamewar. Since it doesn't look like you've done it before with this account, I'm not going to ban it, but if you do this again we will. Ideological battle is not welcome here. All your comments in this thread were ideological battle. And that's just the start of the problems. It isn't necessary for people to agree on divisive topics. That's by definition impossible. But it is necessary for people to remain thoughtful and respectful. That's why the site guidelines say that "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." You used name-calling in the sense the guidelines ask you not to do, for example weaponizing "racist" and "sexist" and "bigotry" in a way that you must know perfectly well is divisive and provocative. By "weaponizing" I mean using words not to communicate information, but to bash something or someone verbally. That's flamewar. You reacted everywhere in this reductionist way, breaking the guideline that asks you to "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." That rule applies to articles and people in articles as well as to to people here. Why? Because discussion gets dumb without it. You crossed into personal attack and incvility in ways that can only inflame people and shut down meaningful conversation ("By being racist you are..."). You did that even when people responded to you gently and thoughtfully—which, amazingly, several did. You threw in things like the KKK for gratituous flamebait. And you extremely overposted to this thread, which spread the flames everywhere. There are still plenty of civil, substantive things people can say to each other when they have strongly different identifications about the issues touched on by a post like this. But that becomes impossible when even one person's reactions are so strong that they can't contain themselves, vandalize the thread, and degrade this community into a ruin that nobody would want to spend time in. On this occasion, you were that person. Please don't be that person again. Instead, please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site as intended from now on. |