We just had to warn you about personal attacks a few days ago. If you continue to cross into incivility on HN, we're going to end up having to ban you. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this?

Your comment also broke the guideline that asks you not to complain about votes. If you think you see abuse on HN, email us at [email protected] instead. I looked at the data on your comments upthread and found no evidence of abuse. Everyone who voted was a long-established user.

I wasn’t making a personal attack against the OP. Just disagreeing with their assessment of “freak out”.

Also being a long established user doesn’t invalidate my point about it being an alias account. It can’t be a fresh account because those don’t have the necessary karma to -ve vote

I don't recall, but I think by "personal attack" I was referring to your baseless accusation of abuse against the GP.

Your first comment wasn't a personal attack, but it still broke the site guidelines—for example the one that asks you to "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." Arguably also the one against snark.

I looked at the vote data, and there's no evidence whatsoever that your comment was downvoted by a voting ring. Far more likely is that it was downvoted for breaking the guidelines. Please don't do that (which btw includes not going on about downvotes).

Ok, I accept I may have overstepped the mark in subsiqent posts - however still disagree with your analysis of the frist post given what I've seen as a typical conversation on HN.

I've been basing my behaviour on what I've watched on here before I signed up and my character is completely in line with that. You have to accept there is a serious attitude problem with many of the established members that goes unchecked because they're established members. Plus significant of abuse of peer moderation too with polite, informative and often correct posts receiving -ve karma from fanboys. Yet the newbies get hit the hardest (I'm basing that assertion on the fact that established members never get reprimanded for breaking the rules).

This place is awash with arrogant and condescending trolls - which is why I based my character on that behaviour. So even if I reel my tone in, who's going to correct the established members who comment in kind?

Even if this is all true, breaking the site guidelines yourself is exactly the wrong reaction. That only makes this place worse still. What's more, your comment seems to imply that you created a new account because you wanted to do this ("I based my character on that behaviour"). If that's not correct, I apologize for suggesting it; but if it is true, that's not ok and will get both your current account and your original account banned.

Instead, you should flag comments that break the guidelines and/or let us know about them at [email protected], while following them scrupulously yourself.

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

Thank you for the advice. What about when someone abuses -ve karma?

Re “based my character”: that’s just a cute way of saying how our online personas are caricatures of our real selves.