[dang]

Can you please edit out swipes from your HN comments, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Your comment would be fine without the first and last sentences.

[IshKebab]

I dunno, there's a definite tendency to say extreme and trivially falsifiable things on HN as if they were fact. I think those should be called out because they really derail rational discussion and encourage "us vs them" narratives.

He is clearly exaggerating for effect so much that it doesn't make sense any more, and IMO that is what leads to unproductive debate. It should be called out as such.

The last sentence is a genuine question.

[dang]

The phrase "call out" is already an indication that HN is not being used as intended (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). You can make your substantive points without any of this.

If you feel that someone else is posting incorrect information, it's sufficient to post correct information. Getting aggressive about it is unnecessary and damages the commons.

[IshKebab]

Well, I'll have to agree to disagree on that. What is moderation if not "calling out"?

[dang]

Calling out, as I understand it, is a tactic of online shaming. We try not to shame anyone, although it does still happen unintentionally.

[IshKebab]

Oh that's not what I understand it to mean. It's more like highlighting or challenging.

See meaning 4.3 here:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/call_out

Like someone close to Trump could call him out by saying to him that Meloni didn't beg for a photo with him.

[dang]

That definition is close to what I mean! But I think you'll find that in online vernacular, to "call $person out for $thing" has the association of publicly shaming $person for some $thing that the caller-outer believes they did, considers bad, and wishes to punish them for and/or pressure them into not doing again.