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...