[gohjo]

No, here's what you do:

1) you ban people who are rude and who you disagree with philosophically, while you do NOT ban the equally rude people who you agree with.

For evidence of the above, look at users like etherael (and his other names; not sure if he tors/vpns or if you can find them), who are raging assholes on a semi-routine basis, but who aren't banned because Libertarian BitCoin Lover matches your values. And let's face facts, you're less willing to ban people who agree with you, even if they're toxic assholes.

If you banned people who you agreed with for the same exact crimes as those you disagree with HN would be a better place.

As it stands, people who agree with you are allowed to be ruder and more toxic than people who disagree with you. This is used as a game by some of HN's worst users who brag on IRC about how it's fun to try to engage in flamewars where they don't get banned but the other individual does.

edit:

Not to mention other game that's played by a lot of folks, which is to be as big of a dick as is possible without actually using openly aggressive language. The goal there being to generate an emotional reaction while retaining some semblance of plausible deniability, because everybody knows that you won't ban them for "polite" taunting, even if it's toxic shit that can't go anywhere useful or interesting.

[dang]

The people who hold the opposite ideology believe fervently that HN is biased the other way (liberal, politically correct, socialist, etc., are some of the terms they use). I realize it's a bit facile to say "both sides claim bias therefore we must be doing something right". But for what it's worth, no, we don't consider ideology when banning people, we consider incivility.

[tptacek]

Dan is a libertarian bitcoin lover? I've spent several hours in person talking to him. I'm a statist liberal Democrat who believes bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. He did not set off my spidey sense. I think you might be attributing generalized fears and frustrations onto specific people you don't know.

[djur]

Being in the same ideological quadrant, I can say that I tend to get as many or more upvotes on political comments as on apolitical/tech-focused comments. And I tend to follow responses to my more contentious comments closely, and I have only very occasionally noticed even a single downvote on said comments.

I think there's a lot of outspoken libertarian/anti-statist types around here, and that's fine, but I don't think it's even the plurality among political stances of HN readers. I suspect being invested in politics to the point that you'll regularly engage in political discussions online is very strongly correlated with holding atypical political views (I include myself in that set).

[throwawayaway]

sorry, it's a pyramid scheme not a ponzi scheme but yeah agree with your sentiment.

although maybe it is a ponzi scheme for the miners now that I think about it.

[etherael]

The worst I ever do is respond rudely to people who have already attacked me, and even there I try to avoid doing so. As for using other names that's just flatly false, as is any gloating about baiting people into flamewars and laughing when they get banned. I haven't even used irc in over a year.

Basically I have no idea what you're talking about.