> The "algorithm" is that I read your comment and saw that it was obviously breaking the rules. I wish I knew how to write software to do that correctly, but I don't.

Got it. Maybe I will give it a shot and share it. I'm not sure which types of bots you're already using but there's ways to orchestrate consensus networks on opinion dynamics to derive a "threat" level (or whatever metric name you want to call it). And that could be used to do things like auto-cut tickets to inspect threads for guideline violations.

IMO, there was a misunderstanding about the term "you": there is an individual "you" and a collective "you".

> Re other commenters: everyone always feels like the mods are singling them out personally and treating the other side with kid gloves

I don't feel like I'm being singled out, more like I feel like there is inconsistency in moderation. Probably because it's hard and there are limited resources and the bots that you do have have thresholds set super judiciously to avoid false-positive flagging (or not; I don't actually know).

Ok, I hear you about the word "you" - it's easy to confuse that in general. I often tell people "I don't mean you personally" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

At the same time, if "you" can be misinterpreted as a personal attack, it likely will be - so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

Moderation here is always going to be inconsistent, simply because we don't see everything that gets posted, or even 10% of it - there's far too much. 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].