Apartheid wasn't about taking privileges away from people as a moderation action. It was about denying inalienable rights to people from birth. Your privilege to post on a forum is voluntarily extended to you by it's operators, and may be rescinded. It's an act of hospitality, not an inalienable right. You don't have a first amendment right to post on a forum and note than I have a first amendment right to compel your speech or demand you host me for dinner.
Apartheid wasn't enforced by mild and easily bypassed forum account restrictions. It was enforced with brutal violence.
People can get so myopic about mild inconveniences introduced to online interactions they expect to be frictionless and that they feel entitled to, and lose all perspective at the drop of a hat.
The lapse of communication is what bothers me, and I suppose it's because the moderators know they can't justify the punishment. Preventing someone from protecting their posterity is a pretty selfishly punitive measure, even if you think they abused the edit feature (somehow). It also doesn't prevent future abuse, doesn't communicate how the user can improve and therefore results in a worse community than just banning then and flagging their comments. I don't understand what the purpose of edit restrictions are in their current form, and clearly other users don't either.
It's really my fault, for coming to Hacker News and expecting to be owed anything. I should have known better than to openly criticize the tech industry on PG's own stomping grounds.
On the other hand your last paragraph is cringe and makes me roll my eyes a lot.
You'll be ok, lots of folks in the tech industry care about you still even if pg personally doesn't.
If you wanted concrete answers, consider emailing the mods and asking.
“ I previously submitted a review critiquing this plugin, but it was removed by JetBrains moderation — an unfortunate decision that, in my view, undermines trust in open feedback. I have now tested the latest AI plugin (v243.23654.270.16). The plugin does offer limited support for third-party providers like Ollama and LM Studio (the latter being a better fit for most local LLM users). However, this support is restricted to chat interactions only — not to autocomplete, inline suggestions, or in-editor refactoring tools. In practice, this limitation significantly reduces the plugin’s value for users who already maintain ChatGPT Pro accounts or local LLM workflows. Rather than fully enabling local model integration, the design seems oriented toward promoting JetBrains’ proprietary cloud models and subscription services. Specific ratings: • Integration with IDE: 5 stars — Excellent UI integration into JetBrains products, smooth setup. • Performance: 1 star — Noticeable latency compared to local models; frequent delays. • Available Features: 1 star — Limited flexibility for serious LLM users; core features locked to cloud services. • User Interface: 1 star — Chat feels bolted-on rather than deeply native; inconsistent UX across project types. • Documentation Quality: 1 star — The documentation exists but feels sparse, with limited guidance on third-party setup and unclear disclosures about feature limitations. While some users may find the plugin sufficient for lightweight AI chat, in my assessment, it falls short both in technical flexibility and in respecting user choice. Thank you to JetBrains for providing the opportunity to share my neutral and unbiased observations with fellow developers” [1].
[1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22282-jetbrains-ai-assi...