Personal attacks like this are not acceptable on HN, no matter who or what they're about. The guidelines are clear that we expect better than this...

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

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

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LatencyKills 3 days ago | parent [-]

You might want to perform a few searches for "Elon Musk", "Donald Trump", "rapist", and "pedophile". High-profile people are attacked constantly on HN.

If you don't like a comment, report it; that's what the feature is for.

I spent many years at Apple, dealing with Gruber directly. If I want to call him an asshole, I will do so.

Lastly, I can't find a single comment in your history that materially adds to the conversation. It's like you believe it is your job to police HN. Hint: it isn't.

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tomhow 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'm a moderator here. It's my job to uphold the guidelines. Personal abuse of anybody is against the guidelines, not because of what we think of any of those individuals, but because of what kind of site HN is meant to be and the kinds of people we want to be. The whole reason this is a place where people want to participate is that we've had guidelines since the start and we uphold them daily. Having known someone personally doesn't make a difference to whether the guidelines apply; indeed, it matters more to make the effort to follow them when it's a topic that is upsetting to you.

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LatencyKills 3 days ago | parent [-]

Great - thank you for your service. I'm a moderator for /r/politics on Reddit. If you think your job is difficult, you should try that for a bit. ;-)

> HN is meant to be and the kinds of people we want to be

Well, I desire to be honest and truthful about my experiences (at both Microsoft and Apple). If I believe my experience can be useful, I will share it.

If you object to my comments, you are, of course, free to remove them.

But don't preach to me about "who we want to be". Perhaps that is who you want to be.

You've done your job by letting me know you don't like my thoughts on Gruber. Thank you. Now, either remove them or continue on with your moderation duties.

Go bug the people calling Trump a pedophile and Musk a Nazi (which I agree with btw!).

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tomhow 2 days ago | parent [-]

Can we quit with the defiant strutting? :) Once again, we're here for curious conversation, not... this.

We don't “remove” anything (the only exception being when a user asks us to do so for privacy reasons). Personally abusive comments about anyone, including controversial public figures, should always be flagged/killed here, but whether that always happens in practice doesn't change whether the guidelines apply to you.

You are very welcome, indeed encouraged, to share your experiences from Microsoft and Apple. We just need you to do it without junking up the place with personal abuse. It's a simple matter of being respectful to this community and the guidelines that make it a place where people want to discuss interesting topics. A comment that consists of nothing more than personal insults about an individual is not “useful” and only drives away people who want to have curious conversations.

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LatencyKills 2 days ago | parent [-]

1. You have repeatedly made the same point. I've heard you.

2. I just submitted a post [0] about Claude refusing to follow stop hook rules. That post is not visible to anyone but me. My previous submissions are still visible. Did you shadowban me?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47889070

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tomhow 2 days ago | parent [-]

I was repeating myself because the disrespectful tone of the replies was continuing, particularly in the last 3-4 lines of that comment.

Regarding your post: it was killed by a spam filter. Sorry about that; we've been deluged with spam and bot-generated posts lately, so the filters have to be tuned quite strictly. We don't ban anyone (other than blatant spammers/trolls) without multiple warnings. I've created a new copy of the post now so it can have its full time on the /newest page.

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LatencyKills a day ago | parent [-]

> I was repeating myself because the disrespectful tone of the replies was continuing

And that will continue as long as you continue to reply in kind. One of the things I find hilarious about your responses: they are exactly like the trolls we deal with in /r/politics. Trolls respond in the same way no matter what you say to them. It's like talking to a wall.

Also, the "spam filter" excuse is bullshit. There is nothing about that post that would have been flagged. It was 100% fact based and would have been useful to the community. I have never had a submission or comment flagged as "spam" before Tom.

I didn't ask you to create another copy of that post. And now I can't delete it. It is almost like you have absolutely no idea how to be a moderator. Sorry if that is "disrespectful". I'll be respectful as soon as you start acting like a moderator.

	▲	tomhow 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Regarding the post you made that was killed: it's a new kind of filter we're experimenting with to deal with the deluge of LLM-generated material that's being posted. That's a recent phenomenon that we're having to experiment with new ways of addressing. We're already aware that it doesn't work particularly reliably on the kind of post you submitted, and we're working to improve it. It was not caused by anything specific to your account; no “shadow-bans” or other penalties. We don't ban accounts or kill posts over moderation disputes. I created a new copy of the post because I assumed that, given you had submitted it earlier and pointed out that it had been killed, you still wanted it to be live. I did that as a goodwill gesture, to show that it was nothing personal or deliberate. If you don't want that post linked to your account, you're welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and ask us to remove it from your account's history.