Your post is inappropriate because it breaks the guidelines by calling names. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I meant coward in a more technical sense of a leader who won't stand by their decision and caves to pressure against it, rather than actual argument, and supported that position within my comment -- no different than saying poor judgment. It certainly was not an ad hominem argument, and not the main thrust of my comment.

I think that many readers are simply being uncharitable in interpretation because they don't like the message.

That aside, Ill omit such language in the future (though Ill leave it here for posterity sake).

If you smack someone or tweak their noise while talking, it doesn't matter if that was your 'main thrust'. Please just don't be uncivil here.

My decision was to try out an idea briefly and learn from it. We achieved that, and what we learned stabilized quickly, so the value of continuing was small. Meanwhile the cost of continuing was nonzero, and possibly high. It turns out that when you tell people you're going to try an idea out briefly just to see what happens, many hear "this is a permanent change". That was not intended, and I didn't want to do damage by allowing that misconception to linger for another several days.

I was going to link to the famous Keynes line about "when the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do?", but it turns out Keynes didn't say it: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/02/11/keynes-he-didnt-s....

> Ill omit such language in the future

Thanks!

I don't believe that accurately labeling poor behavior is uncivil, but I should have used a phrase like "showing cowardice" (more in line with my phrasing of poor judgment) to make it about the specific behavior (and faults with it), rather than a comment about you. I also will, in the future, pick less emotionally charged synonyms or phrases, because they're clearly distracting.

I appreciate the time you've taken to engage with me and explain your thinking (though I disagree with your choices still).

I hope you'll make a post explicitly about the experiment, so we can talk more fully (and civily!) about why I disagree with you.

Have a good day!

> "I think you're a coward"

That's probably the inappropriate part. In fact, your comment would have probably been better off without the entire first sentence. I don't believe the point you're trying to express is reinforced by your introductory sentence at all.

Thank you for the reply.

I agree the comment would've been better without the use of the word coward, because it's obviously a charged term and a distraction here.

(See sibling reply if you care about why I chose to use it.)

Being an outlier here, I don't disagree with you're using the word "coward". If someone acts cowardly, they are a coward. If someone lies, they are a liar. Anyone downplaying such talk may do so for a number of reasons (pride, emotion, to name a couple), but I think the best reason is that they know it's better to build people up than tear them down. Also, some things are subjective and calling someone out on, say, "being stupid" is relative (to one's idea of stupidity) and demeaning.

The overall tone of your post could be read (by some) as insulting in a sense. I wouldn't call them cowards for backing out before a week. It seems more a matter of didn't-have-a-choice. The community ran away with it. So they aren't perfectly honest, so some people would rather be the captain who goes down with his ship, but sometimes it's better to face the inevitable and try to make the best of it.

In short, I can see why your post was downvoted, but I wouldn't downvote it myself. You stated your mind. Just that even geek culture is sensitive it seems (or at least it is here).