[dang]

You posted many flamewar comments in this thread and appear to have done more than any other single account to spoil it. We ban accounts that do this, and your account has (it turns out) been doing it for a long long time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34537163 (Jan 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22904111 (April 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22114100 (Jan 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19449785 (March 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233901 (Oct 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783015 (April 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14278148 (May 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10780427 (Dec 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9985956 (Aug 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8825352 (Jan 2015)

That's excessive and abusive. We need you, same as any other user, to follow the site guidelines regardless of how right you are or feel you are, and regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are.

I appreciate your substantive posts but it's also the case that you've been posting abusively in totally other contexts (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40759689). If you keep this up we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this, that would be good.

[CamperBob2]

Actually I think I'll stand by quite a few of those comments, Dan, including the ones I've posted in this thread. If you feel the need to ban my account, I won't stand in the way, but I will say I don't respect a lot of the objections you've gone back almost 10 years to dig up, especially when considered in the larger context of the threads in question.

Don't want flame wars? Don't post flamewar-inciting links, as many of those arguably are, then object selectively when some people take the bait you're dangling.

[dang]

> Don't want flame wars? Don't post flamewar-inciting links

That's not how HN works. Commenters are responsible for how they react and whether or not they follow the rules. It's not as if you have zero choice in whether you get incited or not, although I know it sometimes feels that way (to me too).

To remove an entire topic to prevent some commenters from posting abusively would be to punish the ones who are following the rules just fine. I don't think that's how HN should operate. Here's another recent post in case it's of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40852027

Of course, not every story is on topic for HN, and indeed most provocative stories aren't—but that's a separate question. Some are, and the rules still apply in those cases. In fact, they apply especially then, as the guidelines make clear: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html