That's a great story! There's a lot of rich experience for some great HN posts in that, too.

I didn't mean to imply that you were lacking in intellectual pursuits or depth or anything like that, and I'm sorry if it came across that way. It's just stock moderation language. All I have to go on are the things an account has posted, especially the recent things an account has posted.

Usually, when people are battling their political or ideological enemies in internet comments, they leave out all of the background and motivations and experiences that have led them to feel the way that they do. That's a shame, because if we included such things it would make it easier for us to relate to each other. It also means that our comments—especially flamewar comments—create a one-dimensional picture of us in the reader's mind. That of course is not an accurate picture of at all, but there's very little information transfer going on in these arguments.

I'm not sure I understood your last suggestion there but we don't consider upvotes when banning accounts. We also don't ban established accounts for just one thing they posted—we'd warn them instead. Bans are for when an account has built up a pattern of breaking the site guidelines. There are some exceptions to that, but they're probably not relevant here.

Thanks for writing such a humane response. I appreciate it.