Its interesting that you didn't actually tell the poster what they did wrong.

I'm also genuinely puzzled by dang's remark. I had tried to limit the unpleasantness in my comment as far as possible, while providing clarifying info and staying accurate to (i) what the trans activism movement itself seems to be stating internally, as well as (ii) the easily foreseeable consequences of these attitudes, if stated only obliquely for the sake of general politeness. If even that counts as "furthering a flamewar", this has some remarkably unpleasant implications about the overall debate re: gender issues.

As I read it, your comment fit the genre of boilerplate ideological rhetoric and that is the last thing we need here.

OK, I'll just agree to disagree then. I understand that boilerplate ideological rhetoric is an unavoidable hazard in a thread about gender issues (or indeed, politics more generally) and I'll keep trying to write comments that are as far as possible from any 'boilerplate'.

it seems like you need to study ideological boilerplate and then constrain your opinions to what is acceptable here at hn.

I wonder if dang could point us to a reference of ideological boilerplate to be avoided, or if its just supposed to be something "we should know."

By "ideological boilerplate" I mean repetitive ideological points, the kind that people repeat over and over again to bludgeon their enemies with in internet battles. That's the opposite of the discussion we want here. What we want is people listening to each other, taking in the specifics of what they have to say, and then responding with something that they haven't thought or said before—let alone a thousand times before. Conversation should be a co-creation between mutually respecting equals. When done well, it is always new. This follows from the core principle of HN, namely curiosity [1], because curiosity withers under repetition [2].

Snark is also a clear indicator of repetitive bludgeoning because people only resort to that when they have, let's call it, surplus creative energy left over—no real thought being needed to repeat the underlying points—which they use to try to add force to the smiting [3].

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Thank you for taking the time to write that out dang.

You are getting close to criticizing posters for "wrongthink"

dressing it up under the term "boilerplate ideological rhetoric" doesn't change anything.

That's easily disproven: HN commenters post views from every side of these questions, and as long as they do so thoughtfully and substantively, we don't moderate them.

Commenters in the habit of posting typical internet dreck love nothing better than to paint themselves in grandiose colors as noble, freethinking victims of repression. In fact the problem is, to put it crudely, that they post such shitty comments. We're just trying to have an internet forum that manages to hover a little above the bottom of the barrel.

p.s. It looks like your account has been breaking the site guidelines by using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which ideology you're battling for or against, because it destroys the curiosity this place is supposed to exist for. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed here either, for the same reason. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

> HN commenters post views from every side of these questions, and as long as they do so thoughtfully and substantively, we don't moderate them.

It's the absence of action that is the issue. There is all kinds of left wing (I'm from the US for reference) dreck on here that receives no push back nor moderation. It's very common to see very low value statements on HN that disparage Republicans. People on here have said all kinds of nasty things about Republicans and conservatives. I rarely see any push back from you against these. It's pretty common to see people assume that Republicans don't care about people and state so, like it is an obvious truth without any supporting argument. How is that thoughtful or substantive?

I think your personal biases are blinding you to just how low value much of the accepted discussion here at HN is, when it is left-leaning

These perceptions are notoriously in the eye of the beholder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. The opposite side to you makes exactly the opposite generalizations. It's obvious that these claims can't all be right. What's less obvious, but I think also true, is that because they're so identical, there must be some common mechanism producing them. I think it's that people's perceptions are strongly conditioned by their passions.

In other words, while "I rarely see" is no doubt true, the reasons for that have to do with your own filters as much as the objective situation. This explains why the opposite side reaches the opposite conclusions from the same data: they have the opposite filters. It's the same mechanism in both cases, and there are more than enough datapoints to support every pre-existing view. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

As you can imagine, what this boils down to is that all passionate political observers feel equally aggrieved and, ironically, all share the same perception that HN is stacked against them and they're being treated unfairly.

Thanks for the response. There is a lot of truth to what you say. I've come to notice that different articles seem to be magnets for different groups of posters. So there seems to be a little bit of a echo-chamber-like-bubble around particular articles, which probably enhances these effects of everyone feeling aggrieved.