I think you need to stop and reconsider whether this is the appropriate attitude to take toward someone who really does nothing more than write articles and speak at conferences.

I'd also argue that a culture of tolerance, civility and diversity of views does far more to foster the open exchange of ideas than the silencing of those with whom we disagree.

I do agree somewhat with some of the criticisms that you and others have put forth about Techcrunch as a publication, in particular that it was prone to hype. But otherwise I think he performed a valuable service to our industry, and I think his willingness to speak his mind is both rare and laudable.

It saddens me that the animosity and intolerance that have shadowed Techcrunch have boiled over to something as despicable as this.

Pieing is the act of throwing a pie at an authority figure, as a means of protesting against a perceived flaw (arrogance, hubris) in the target's character.

and also:

Godard was very pleased at being pied.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieing

Because of course it couldn't possibly be that people object to the way in which he spouts those disagreeable opinions. Or the ex-cathedra pontificating on technical matters he has no understanding of whatsoever. Or the use of his extremely loud megaphone to bully individuals.

The bulk of the antipathy towards Arrington, I believe, has very little to do with what he says and almost everything to do with how he says it. When TC was new, none of the most obnoxious behaviour was yet apparent. As time's gone on it's been on a continual slide into egomania and vindictiveness.

[And, fwiw, no: I have never been covered, or asked to be covered, or had a project which was relevant to be covered, by Techcrunch.]

[edit: In case anybody's unclear, nothing here should be misinterpreted as support or defence of gobbing in his face.]

I might be in the minority on this, but I was unhappy with the whole discussion from the past about banning/censoring Valleywag and Techcrunch. Though the arguments against Valleywag had slightly more merit, the whole thing smacked of intolerance toward people and ideas we disagree with, which see its logical culmination in acts like this spitting incident.

Makes me think John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" should be required reading here.

It is also true that not all speech is equally tolerable, in both the moral and legal sense. The Supreme Court ruled long ago, for example, that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not an instance of protected speech.

The point is that despite just writing articles and speaking at conferences, the content of his messages have far more meat than his enactment of them.

From the way you describe your beef with him, it sounds as if you're making up a personality for him-- that you're projecting onto him your bitterness about "Web 2.0 greed culture." You're wrong about that too, incidentally.

There are a lot of faster, easier ways to make money if you're greedy. Before the crash, I'd say go into finance and become an i-banker.

Web 2.0 start ups -- especially one seeking seed money and boot strapping -- are seeking more responsibility than they are wealth. It still has that "selling t-shirts on the internet" feeling: a) Everyone is doing it. b)It feels like a good idea. c) Its not really known if people can make money from doing it.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I did down-mod the comment that you just deleted.

I don't understand what you mean, anyway. You don't like his business, you don't like his writing, but you have all sorts of cares for him? Er .. why? What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?

In my book, a man is but the sum of his actions. I can't stand Arrington's actions, therefore I can't stand him, ergo I have no sympathy for the hatred his actions have engendered amongst sum.

And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either. The coward would be writing spiteful comments anonymously on blogs. Walking up to someone and spitting in their face takes balls, IMO. Not exactly my preferred means of communication but it certainly got the point across.

Yes, spitting on someone is illegal.

Fun game: stand on a busy street corner and spit on everyone who walks by. If you're arrested before you're crippled, you win.

Anyway I stand corrected.

There are no physical consequences to being spat on by a healthy person (if they are sick and do so knowingly to infect you, that is completely different). It is an insult, a grotesque one, but an insult none the less, and should be treated as such by law.

That is not necessarily true. Commission of verbal assault can land a person in jail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words_doctrine#United_...

The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as granted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its 9-0 decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine and held that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [which] the prevention and punishment of...have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."

the test for battery is that you harmfully or offensively touched someone or something on them

i think spitting would fall under both for most juries..

From the HN guidelines:

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Would you prefer to be spat on instead?

I'm beginning to suspect my writing style is prone to misunderstanding, though. C'est la vie.

You've been bravely standing behind your words, even in the face of the "public shaming" of so many downmods. That's respectable.

Besides, should a downvote be used to express mere disagreement, or reserved for posts that one thinks are really inappropriate or maybe jarringly stupid?

In any case, I agree that insulting someone or calling them names should not be a crime, and that spitting on someone shouldn't be considered an "assault" (with the provisions you mentioned).

Under some interpretations of US law, a 22 year old taking nude photo's of them self could be prosecuted for creating child porn if they look 16.

I think if you asked a thousand people off the street:

Is that accurate? Is that moral? Is that a travesty of justice? Is that reasonable?

You would get yes, no, and sort of to all of those questions and it's not really a "major" hot topic.

I do wish those guidelines had something about why to mod up or down, though. Modding something down or up simply because you happen to agree, regardless of the quality or validity of the argument presented, will also lead to boring reading - the majority view, endlessly repeated, since it's the only "safe" thing to post.

To the trusting souls who upvoted this show of sincerity: what he did next was write a program to spam the site with 545 identical comments.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Arrington

In defense of the site though, your initial downmodded comment was rather condescending and showed a lack of knowledge of the area. Responding to someones idea with "Huh? You really think that?" isn't very respectful and it shows a certain amount of arrogance. Arrogance is frowned upon pretty heavily here. It doesn't add anything to the discussion when you are correct and is just plain obnoxious when you are wrong. Be humble about what you know, ask questions about what you don't, and provide logical arguments for what you think. That's a big part of what sets this site apart from a lot of the other sites like it.

I assume you're a moderator - although they're much appreciated by myself, these well-written tips will just get lost in the noise here. You might consider adding them to the FAQ yourself : )

For example, saying: "I can't believe you people are downmodding me." will most likely just cause people to pile on and punish you.

But saying: "To those downmodding me, if you think I meant this, I really meant that." or "Just to clarify, I meant it this way." will often defuse a misunderstanding and cause people to at least put you back up to 1.

Really the key is to be civil. It's rare that someone gets dogpiled just for dissenting. However, if you dissent in a rude manner, people are tempted to see how negative one comment can get.

Spot on about the expedient solution to seeing something you don't like, though.

As noted it is illegal in most countries.

"I don't understand what you mean, anyway. [...] What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?"

Something a great deal worse than writing articles that do not much interest me. I find it incomprehensible that someone could find a matter of mere taste to be sufficient justification for a crime.

"And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either."

Your definition of bravery is not one I have any respect for then.

I don't remember defining bravery anywhere? I simply said that in my opinion, most "cowards" don't consummate their cowardice by walking up to big guys (Arrington is a big guy) and spitting on them.

Anyone motivated enough to take an "extreme" action against someone else (eg spitting on them) could be argued that they are not necessarily in a right frame of mind and more or less going to do it regardless of circumstances.

Exhibit A - the guy who threw shoes at then President Bush.. there were secret service all over that place.

Without knowing who did it, or for what reason, I'd be fairly confident in betting that at no point did Michael's size come into the equation.

i expect you've never tried to raise vc?

How is that?

1. because he obviously has 2. I consider this to be generally accepted as truthful 3. if you don't agree then we are probably not going to agree on anything, ever

and leave it at that. This is probably breaching some law of argument ("Fallacy of Call to Common Sense" or something?) but hey, who has the time.

I don't know Arrington, but to me he always sounded like a humble, down-to-earth guy, very passionate about his job.

Maybe we should re-evaluate that.

Many, if not most of the TC articles posted here do seem to be sensationalist in nature, so it's easy to believe Arrington's just after ad-money (as some people say).

From a business standpoint, it would be silly for pg to ban a site that helps promote YC startups, not to mention TC is nowhere near as wonky/gossipy as valleywag.

Right. PG banning it would be different from people just not posting any TC stories though. No need for PG to incur Arrington's wrath.

From what I've seen, TC contains so much gossip and mildly nauseating posts that we'd be better off without it.

A lot of people dislike the guy (I dont care for his attitude myslef but I respect his influence) and probably waould say "he deserves a punch" without meaning it literally :)

I was taking your comment as a cue too :D

(alsio known as hitting the wrong reply button)