[spankyspangler]

Ahh, you not only detached the subthread but also crippled my ability to reply. Your intentions to swiftly protect the feelings of your user base and shield them from difficult conversations is laudable, though misguided because you inadvertently left the "The “become COVID-19 carriers to own the libs” strategy kinda worked." comment up. Or is that what you mean by different quality of discussion?

It was certainly not my intention to start flamewars so I will make all endeavours to stop doing that (and stop beating my wife etc). From the votes and subsequent productive discussions in the thread you disconnected, it seems like a good number of users agreed with me, and we were able to shut down the conspiracy theory talk while leaving the door open to further discussion of the interesting parts (virus spreading between towns and cities). So I genuinely don't see the problem, but I can hold my nose and try to be gentler with conspiracy theorists if that would help.

Because I will continue to call out baseless conspiracy theorists and hateful / flamewar comments as I see them, while trying to be calm, measured, and proportionate in response. If calling out baseless and harmful conspiracy theories proves too much for fragile users or moderators to cope with, I'm more than happy to move along from your site, and leave you to your "different quality" discussions and conspiracy theories.

[dang]

I rate limited your account, which is standard practice when an account has been posting too many low-quality comments too quickly. It hasn't crippled your ability to reply; it just means you need to wait a bit. We're happy to take rate limits off when people give us reason to believe that they've taken the intended spirit of the site to heart and will post fewer and more substantive comments in the future. That would be the opposite direction from things like "I will continue to call out" and so on—we're trying to avoid online callout/shaming culture, denunciatory rhetoric, and things like that, because they're so tedious.

Intention not to start flamewars is good but not sufficient. You also have to actually not start them (or perpetuate them). https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...