Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how little someone else has contributed to open source or how mad their comment makes you feel.
It's particularly not ok to bring someone else's personal details as ammunition in an argument (or attempt to): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... But please omit the name-calling ('leecher') and snark ('sorry to break it to you') also.
I was fully aware of the guidelines and potential consequences when posting this comment. That said I didn’t expect it to be a serious enough violation to deserve a moderation comment.
I think a little bit of context is warranted. The parent is a shallow dismissal that applies to a vast amount of paid software (to be clear I have no skin in the game at all); “Wow how revolutionary! /s” didn’t help either. It’s a rather obvious case of guidelines violation itself according to my understanding, and it’s painful to see it voted to the top, which IMO doesn’t reflect well on the community at all.
(I know piling on a bad comment is no defense for breaking rules, but seeing it at the top was a bit much.)
As for the personal attack, the shallow dismissal is pretty bad as is, but I wouldn’t have vented my frustration if it came from someone who has notable contributions behind their belt and could somewhat understandably attack paid software like this. Not even meeting that threshold was a tipping point for me. Personally I gauge whether I have crossed the line with the thought experiment of whether I could say it out loud to that person’s face. In this case I could and I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. It breaks the rules here, that’s very clear, but I’m not ashamed of the comment.
Some specifics:
> name-calling (‘leecher’)
I was making a BitTorrent analogy where a seeder is someone who uploads and a leecher is someone who downloads. It was not meant to be offensive, but I can see how it could be read that way. Will be more careful in the future.
> snark
Point taken.
Overall, I don’t regret posting this comment, even if I’m banned for it right now. I will do my best to shut up in the future though, if I’m not.
Follow-up: I read more moderation comments at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... which gave me a better idea of why using personal details in arguments would degrade discussions here. That made me change my mind and I’ll not do it again.
I maintain that the parent comment is toxic and disappointing for the community.
Thanks for looking at those comments and getting them; you have no idea how much I appreciate that!
I agree that the GP comment was a shallow dismissal, and those often lead to generic subthreads, which tend to attract upvotes and replies and generally change the subject to a more generic topic, which is bad. Most of the damage is in the upvotes, actually, because the biggest problem comes from such a comment sitting at the top of a thread, accruing mass and choking out more specific and substantive discussion. That's a big problem on HN.
When we see generic subthreads or shallow dismissals or (worse) flamewar tangents at the top of an HN discussion, we downweight them. That has turned out to be a great solution, especially when the subthread isn't really violating the site guidelines. Its big weakness is that it requires us to know about it, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you or anyone sees one of these discussion-choking subthreads sitting as the top comment, emailing hn@ycombinator.com a heads-up would be a valuable contribution. Those are some of the best heads-ups we get, especially when a thread is still live.
It's particularly not ok to bring someone else's personal details as ammunition in an argument (or attempt to): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... But please omit the name-calling ('leecher') and snark ('sorry to break it to you') also.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.