Mithaldu

Actually, you know what. Just ban me. This evening on this site has been another wasteful drain and i've barely even posted. I'm changing my email and password to random noise now.

If i felt comfortable discussing that in public i'd already have done so.

My point is that the state of things here is silencing voices who simply stop bothering to post, while you let toxic people and their posts remain after a slap on the wrist.

I have to admit i'm unaware of that case. Got a place that explains it?

I have considered this before even making the post. (I also have considerable experience with these biases because i have for years run a community with thousands of users visiting each day.) I could point out examples, but i don't think that would be productive.

Right now i'm thinking that your bias in perception is that you tend to look mostly at technical topics where there is no opportunity for this kind of rift without going obviously off-topic. (What your perception of HN is is highly determined by which comment threads you look at.)

That consideration is baked into my post. They fall under category 1 as well.

Reading this has made me find words i've been looking for for months now, and maybe you will at least see these, hopefully even think about them:

As an idealistic goal your policies are great. In practice however i find they sorely underestimate the differential in effort required between:

- someone who has to censor their earnest thoughts preemptively to not be censured by you

and

- a troll gleefully dressing up words they know will hurt in dressing nice enough to fly under your radar

You're asking the former to spend a lot more time and work, than it takes the latter, for whom it's a form of playing, a game they enjoy. I don't have a solution, but i think it's true that your policies have a chilling influences on earnest voices and are creating a community where trolls are very loud.

I see you stand strong against people who say the right things with impolite words. Fine, your choice. But honestly, the more i watch these things the more i notice that you NEVER stand as strong against people who say vile hateful things in nice words.

Given this, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that people feel more and more that it's not worth to try and make an effort to stay nice if that's how "the top" behaves.

> Your OS will swap the software out when you aren't using it

Wrong, since Electron apps NEVER sit still.

If you don't know the meaning of those yet, save your energy for the day when you do.

I'm not saying less moderation is needed, but that the moderation itself being done is low quality.

> we do such a great work maintaining top quality questions

You don't. Straight-up. You may think you do, but SO utterly fails at this.

In almost all cases where i end up on SO in my research the accepted answer is trash, and the one below it is the real one.

> I don't see myself as a kind person and asking me to spend extra mental energy

If you can't be kind, then the preferred action from you is for you to save your energy for the days when you can be kind. That's better for everyone involved.

Of course there are mechanisms. For example it is super easy to tell if an asker is indian, by their name. And often women chose names that allow a good guess. Other hints may also be contained in the name. Then there is the profile image, and of course the bio. And lastly, often the question itself can contain details that hint at things.

Yes, people can hide these characteristics, but they shouldn't need to.