[dang]

I agree. The trouble is that we don't see everything that gets posted here; there's too much. So sometimes when there's a repeated pattern of abuse, it takes longer than we would like to notice it. Users can help by flagging comments (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html for how) and by emailing [e-mail] about egregious cases.

[reitzensteinm]

Ah, I specifically picked a comment that had been killed by repeated flagging. I assumed that there'd be a human reviewing by that stage.

I've been under the impression for a while that it takes quite a bit more to be banned these days than five years ago, but that might just be nostalgia.

Anyway, I know you're volunteers and it's not really appropriate for me to be complaining about the dress code after fighting in your bar. I'm sorry for causing trouble.

[dang]

Well, we're not volunteers except in the sense that we volunteer to be paid to do this :)

I appreciate the decency of your response.