Re:The final, anguished years of a warrior-scholar who expos...
by rectang on Saturday December 11, 2021 @09:42PM
(#29526634)
The "bitflipped" version expanded the theme from whistleblowers to "powerful people" — that's where I think it fell down.
In both cases there are broad generalizations being made, but in my version I was careful to circle back to the smaller theme. I try to do this consistently because avoiding "generic tangents" is in the HN guidelines:
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
In retrospect, rather than relying on context, I could have explicitly qualified the final sentence to clarify that I was speaking of the relative weight of individuals and organizations in US society specifically with regards to the outcome of whistleblowing. I'd like to think there's something I could have done to have earned a more generous reading from you so we don't end up in a rhetorical gotcha game.
In both cases there are broad generalizations being made, but in my version I was careful to circle back to the smaller theme. I try to do this consistently because avoiding "generic tangents" is in the HN guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
In retrospect, rather than relying on context, I could have explicitly qualified the final sentence to clarify that I was speaking of the relative weight of individuals and organizations in US society specifically with regards to the outcome of whistleblowing. I'd like to think there's something I could have done to have earned a more generous reading from you so we don't end up in a rhetorical gotcha game.