I can't help but wonder why it's prudent to sweep in for a comment like that, but not any of the comments that have been associating homelessness with murder rates on an article apparently about a dispute between two tech workers. It's almost like the guidelines are catered not towards high-quality discussion so much as an aesthetic of high-quality discussion by protecting the emotions of a specific class of people who would get offended by that comment. Or should I be flagging comments that euphemistically mention the "homeless problem"?

We're not protecting any "specific class of people". Anyone with an insight to offer about homelessness, or any other question under discussion, is welcome to do it. We just ask people not to rage at and/or demonize each other, because that's the way that internet forums destroy themselves. Scorched earth isn't interesting to anybody: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

People often think that if we moderate comment X, we must care less about or even be endorsing comment Y, but that's not the case. We just see a more-or-less random sample of the comments. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at [email protected].

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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

Maybe I wasn't clear enough with my criticism: You are unambiguously making a value judgement that the feelings of people who get offended by comments like "Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go" are more important than the homeless who are being baselessly accused of being murderers. I don't think you honestly expect me to believe this discrepancy is simply because you "see a more-or-less random sample of the comments", but if that is the case, simply search for "homeless" in the relevant discussions and have at it -- if you still can't see the problem, then read the results again replacing "homeless" with "y'all" or "people like you" and see if you feel the same way about whether they could use commenting on. The only way you can possibly justify the way the guidelines has been handled is if it operates on the idea that people who are less represented here, such as the homeless, don't deserve the same courtesy.

I make no such judgement. I moderated plenty of those comments when I saw people breaking HN's rules, just as I moderated yours when I saw you breaking HN's rules. The assumption that I must be secretly siding against your view is wrong, let alone the implication that my values must be twisted and inhumane because I'm doing my job this way.

People always feel like the mods must be against them (and are depraved to boot) when their comments get moderated. It's a routine reaction and it's completely illusory. Comments that express this reaction are all pretty similar, no doubt because they have the same mechanism underlying them.

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

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

The last thread was full of people advocating a violent police response to the homeless and this is the comment you choose to take a stand over?

It's more or less random which comments we "choose to take a stand over". If we see people breaking the rules, we ask them not to. There's no implication of a total ordering, or any hierarchy of abuse.

The idea that if comment X says one thing and Y says another and we reply to X but not Y, that means we're endorsing "violent police responses to the homeless", is... not valid. It's not possible for us to see everything, even in the same thread, let alone all threads.

If you see particularly egregious comments that haven't been moderated, you're welcome to point them out to us and we can take a look. [email protected] is the best way to do that.

I never claimed or implied that you are endorsing anything. Tolerating and endorsing are different things.

The thread was full of people blaming the homeless for the murder before any facts were known and calling for a response. Not one or two comments, a thread full of them.

Ok. I thought you were implying some sort of bias or incorrect priority in how we moderated that thread, and didn't think that was true or fair. I posted dozens of moderation comments there, and did plenty of scolding of the comments you're objecting to. In fact I spent my entire day doing that and related things; it wasn't possible to do more.

If that wasn't what you were saying, I'm sorry for misinterpreting you!

Sure no problem. Appreciate the work you do moderating!