[Tomte]

> Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is;

While I'm generally an admirer of dang and sctb, a variation of this is my criticism, as well:

They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour.

It's fine to chide me for blowing off steam, I shouldn't do that. But when it is because "the other guy" has behaved and "discussed" very dishonestly, I don't think he should get a pass.

At least the whole sub-thread should be deleted, but usually my (wrong, but still rather slight) reaction (like "I find your way of responding dishonest" – not even "I find you dishonest", mind you) is deleted and the dreck that I was subjected to remains.

Because he did not use the words "asshole" or "dishonest" and rather cleverly expressed the same in a "clean" way.

It just incentivises commenters to get more sneaky, back-handed and dog-whistly. And that is already destroying this community, I feel.

[throawayofcolor]

They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour.

It just incentivises commenters to get more sneaky, back-handed and dog-whistly

I can't express how surprised I am (in a good way) to see this finally addressed and vocalized, because I myself have struggled with a way of putting it to words, and wishing to see others communicating it publicly.

Among women and people of color this site has a VERY unfavorable reputation for how our opinions and thoughts are moderated rather strongly because of the frustration we express with dog-whistle arguments that are delicately delivered with kid gloves, while the harbingers of opinions and principles that dehumanize, otherwise, minimize, de-legitimize and/or otherwise ostracize our lived experiences as women and minorities in tech are left alone and allowed to promulgate throughout the rest of the community unmolested.

Thank you both to the two previous commenters for giving my frustrations with this moderation style a voice.

[dang]

When you say "moderated" I assume you're talking about the moderators of this site, who are me and sctb. I don't agree with you at all that this is how we moderate HN. In fact, what you describe is something that we both try to be careful not to do. If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this. That way we can learn from our mistakes if you're right, and readers can see for themselves if you're not.

[throawayofcolor]

Yes, your assumption is correct, but I'm not particularly interested in how much you agree or disagree because I don't have much hope that this will change, and your mere disagreement alone isn't going to make me pull an about face on the frustrations I feel about topics people of my social-persuasion and the others I elucidated on and pretend that those frustrations don't have merit--not in the face of my six years of participation in this community.

And further, frankly:

If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this.

No, I don't think I will because believe it or not (which you probably wont, but again: don't much care), you and I have interacted on this very topic before via a different account, you and other individuals have interacted on this topic before. I've watched those interactions happen.

This isn't the first time HN has been called out on this Dan, and it's not the first time you've responded to people levying them, so I'm not entirely convinced you need help finding such examples.

If you want "cases", I'm pretty sure you know the correct hashtag on twitter to go looking for because I and many others catalogue these events quite actively and quite publicly.

But I'm not holding your hand finding them.

Be well.

Edit:

I'd be remiss not mentioning this: Just because I'm calling out the HN moderation tactics does not mean I'm laying down accusations on the HN moderators as individuals or what your individual beliefs on this topic are. I-like the two commenters above me have done-am pointing out what I feel to be a glaring blind spot in the moderation styles as experienced by a member of a specific social group. A group I would also feel remiss not mentioning is not represented in the moderation ranks. Take this however you will, feel about it however you want, consider my peace on the matter spoken.