You are not the first person here to suspect that Assange may be falsely accused. If you'd put it that same way, like I just did, you would have likely generated some discussion on the topic. As it is, you merely said something inflammatory and inappropriate.
A couple of weeks ago, this site featured a story about a woman who accused a man of groping her at ApacheCon. If there is a more loaded topic for discussion than that, I can't think of it. Yet this community managed to have a very civil discussion about it, due to those rules you are disparaging.
I did acknowledge the potential quality issue, which is what you spent your message talking about. You didn't really address anything I said. I bet I guessed your nationality right, though, didn't I?
> You are not the first person here to suspect that Assange may be falsely accused.
As I said, I was the first one to hint at that quite likely possibility.
> a woman who accused a man of groping her at ApacheCon. If there is a more loaded topic for discussion than that, I can't think of it. Yet this community managed to have a very civil discussion about it, due to those rules you are disparaging.
That's nice, but what did you think the civil discussion might have devolved into? Hypersensitive overreacting about "assault"?
This Assange -story, on the other hand, is not only about alleged rape, but also about the place where conspiracy-theories and reality meet.
Also: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1917913
Shouldn't you go demand more "proof" from him too, or is it just easier to pile on the heavily downvoted guy?
It shouldn't be too hard to see this is all bullshit, and that's what I originally got downvoted for trying to point out (in a less-than-HNesquely-eloquent manner).
Productive discussions demand evidence and you provided none.
Would it also be terrible to be falsely accused of rape, in an internationally public manner?
The problem here is that mine was the first comment to allude to the whole debacle being disgusting bullshit.
There weren't almost any comments in the thread, possibly because if you really wanted to discuss this, you'd have to discuss the whole thing being bullshit, and facing the bullshit-laden reality we live in is unpleasant.
HN doesn't want to discuss unpleasant realities.
That may actually be a good thing for maintaining the high quality of discussions on other, more pleasant subjects - who knows. But on the other hand, spreading awareness of bullshit being bullshit would do us all good in our role of ordinary citizens of various governments.