[flylikeabanana]

Let's say I block all Tor users for my website, because the level of abuse that Tor enables means an overwhelming amount of the malicious traffic I encounter comes from Tor. Am I painting all Tor users with the same brush here, or am I just min-maxing my time and energy trying to wrangle all the crap?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Er, yes; if you block every TOR user then obviously you're painting them all with the same brush.

[flylikeabanana]

That phrase is usually referring to some sort of judgement or characterization, not a particular action. If a teacher makes the whole class stay late because a few were acting up, that's not painting with the same brush. If you think that all children are disruptive because a few acted up, that is.

[lostmsu]

> If a teacher makes the whole class stay late because a few were acting up, that's not painting with the same brush

Huh, I'd think it is. Class goes home, and the acting up go to the principal is the regular non-sweeping treatment.

[hot_gril]

Ok but in both the case of HN and TOR, you're making a judgement about the kind of people on there. There's nothing inherently wrong with traffic from a TOR router, it's the users on there. HN referrals are similarly not a problem per se.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Hm, I suppose that's a distinction that can be made. OTOH, I think someone posting

> In addition, we find that only a tiny fraction of HN comments (often less than 1%) actually engage with the substance of our articles, with the majority being off-topic, misinformative, repetitive, or otherwise of low quality, making the overall value of HN exposure overwhelmingly negative for our project.

very much is judging the actual people.

[hot_gril]

You're doing both. The TOR users would probably not be happy, but if you don't want them you don't want them. Now do you want to ban TOR users (probably doing illegal stuff) or HN users (mostly just normie SWEs)?