Re:Marc Andreessen – Lessons, Predictions, and Recommendatio...
by jacques_chester on Saturday June 04, 2016 @09:54PM
(#11839255)
The Principle of Charity you're espousing suggests to me that people would wander around accusing insufficiently genteel comments of uncharitability. Too many rules attract rules lawyering, which turn the agora into a tedious parody of a courtroom.
My own style of moderation, based on long observation, is very few, very simple rules backed by ruthless and unapologetic moderation. I appreciate your leniency.
I think the answer here is to answer, here, if you disagree. It's humiliating to be corrected in public, I always hate being on the receiving end of it, but if I'm stuck with an impulsive streak then that's just part of thinking out loud on the internet.
Re:Marc Andreessen – Lessons, Predictions, and Recommendatio...
by jacques_chester on Sunday June 05, 2016 @11:48AM
(#11841525)
In retrospect, "espouse" is a loaded word. Let's pretend I said "advocate".
Re:Marc Andreessen – Lessons, Predictions, and Recommendatio...
by dang on Sunday June 05, 2016 @02:21PM
(#11842284)
I'm fine with espousing it.
I don't think the consequences you're worried about are likely. People expressed similar worries when we introduced "avoid gratuitous negativity", which didn't happen; there's marginally less gratuitous negativity (at least I think so) and that's about it.
No doubt there's a socio-physiological function to saying bad things about the rich and powerful. It feels good, and you can say literally anything in that genre and get applause (on HN, upvotes). So it's inevitable. But it goes against the mandate of this site, which is "gratify intellectual curiosity". Note how that excludes both other forms of curiosity and other forms of gratification.
There's no political or ideological dimension to this (e.g. pro-VC or anti-VC). For present purposes, none of that matters—what matters is the form of the comment: is it reflexive or reflective? Or, to use your term: is the blood rising? That's what seems to determine discussion quality. If there's a better principle than the Principle of Charity for encoding this distinction in an actionable form, I'd love to know. I haven't seen anything else that comes close.