[dang]

Ok, but anyone could say that about any comment, so from a moderation perspective that is either an empty point or means that we shouldn't moderate anything at all.

For practical purposes, someone has to make judgment calls about these things. The way we do that is that we have a set of guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and moderators who make calls about which accounts are breaking them. We try to be as even-handed as possible when we do that, but certainly no one is going to agree with every call we make. Nevertheless, someone has to do the job, and that includes banning accounts when people break the rules and aren't interested in modifying their behavior.

[hatware]

> we shouldn't moderate anything at all

Moderation is absolutely necessary. What bothers me is that we are 4 or 5 comments deep, and you still seem to not understand why I spoke up in the first place.

The comment you initially replied to did not come off as a personal attack at all to me, in fact, there was nothing personal about it. They took data that was shared with them and used their experience to spit out their own thoughts on the matter.

So, I am calling you out for being a bit too zealous with the power you wield. What you do with my perspective being shared with you is up to you, but you're doing a lot to not just ask yourself "Was I being too harsh?" ... Here you have a human telling you that yes, that was too harsh.

Calling out the bitter flavor of a corporation's kool-aid is not a personal attack on anyone. Period.

[dang]

You (edit: I meant the original commenter) very much attacked the person ("you"). I'm sorry, but this was not a particularly borderline call. See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... for past similar examples.

If you (edit: I meant the original commenter) had just said it about the corporation, it would still not have been a high-quality HN comment, but I wouldn't have posted a moderation reply.

[hatware]

> You very much attacked the person

Sorry? I did not attack anyone. I am defending a comment by somebody else in which you presume they are personally attacking someone who has openly admitted they work for Microsoft.

You really are lost aren't you? Along with the irony of mentioning "high-quality" comments. Wow. What is the _level of quality_ when the commenter has lost track of the person with whom they are speaking...? In case you missed it, I'm talking about you.

I will re-iterate, because I'm patient. I am telling you that you were overzealous in moderating a harmless comment about Microsoft as a company. There is no personal attack in the comment, no matter how you choose to view it.

Feel free to understand the perspective of others before you blindly share more of yours. What a disgusting interpretation of "moderation." Censorship is a much better word to describe where you're headed.

[dang]

You're right, of course: the comment I described as containing a personal attack was by bakul (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684540), not by you. Sorry for mixing that up! I've added edits to the GP to clarify.

The core moderation point there is unchanged.