A story and the reality are always different. The story as presented to people at the time was Aaron had done something (legally) wrong and was in trouble for doing it, some people believed what he did was for a just cause (education material should be free) and others didn't.

If the people reading the story at the time were expected to act on the situation by donating, why is it wrong for them to act in the form of a comment? How can it be fair to say people should have donated based on their understanding of the situation but not be able to comment on the situation?

Every single person in that comment thread is just as guilty of wrong doing if edw519 is guilty of any, because they all formed an opinion around something they knew very little of. It just so happens that the opinion edw519 expressed is unfortunately one that is at odds with the reality of the situation.

First, just to be really clear about this: Ed is pretty much the very last example of bad behavior that I would ever look to on HN. He's a heck of a nice guy, and I wish he wasn't the one being discussed here.

That said, surely you can acknowledge that there's a difference between donating and posting a comment?

oh of course, they're very different things that have very different motivations and very different results, what I'm trying to argue is that they are both actions that come from an interest in the subject at hand. If you act on something (regardless of the specifics of that action) then you're making a commitment to that subject.

The point is every single person that acted on that post was doing it under exactly the same idea, "I have read about this situation and based on what I have read I believe x to be (true / false) and therefore I (support / don't support) Aaron" so when someone said "I believe that Aaron does not deserve to be bearing the burden here, I am donating $10 to his fund" they were making exactly the same assumptions as edw519 made when he said "I believe that Aaron is responsible for this situation and therefore should be responsible for the consequences".

The only difference is edw519 is on the wrong side of the outcome. Those that donated didn't know that Aaron was in some serious shit way beyond what anyone imagined, just like edw519 didn't know that Aaron was in some serious shit way beyond what he imagined.

If everyone took the line you're talking about, "I don't know the full story (because nobody ever can) so I'm not going to pass any judgement" Aaron would not have been the recipient of any donations, because Aaron could have been more in the wrong than edw519 thought! Maybe the prosecution had evidence that showed Aaron intended to rip people off, or commit a terrible crime? I don't want to be behind supporting that! I had better just ignore everything.

> If everyone took the line you're talking about, "I don't know the full story (because nobody ever can) so I'm not going to pass any judgement"...

sigh. I never said that. I have no idea how you got from "comment publicly" to "pass judgement".

I think I'm misunderstanding the point you're making, I'm not much good at interpreting things. From what I understand of your comment:

    That is what is wrong with saying, "just accept the consequences", 
    when you have no damn idea what the consequences are.

I think you're saying that he shouldn't have passed judgement because he wasn't aware of the situation, although now reading your emphasis on ""comment publicly" to "pass judgement"" I suspect you may have meant that edw519 is at fault for his specific action (commenting that he thought Aaron should accept the consequences) not for thinking that Aaron should have accepted the consequences? If that's the case then my comment will not have been particularly relevant, sorry about that.

> I suspect you may have meant that edw519 is at fault for his specific action (commenting that he thought Aaron should accept the consequences) not for thinking that Aaron should have accepted the consequences?

Yes, exactly, with the caveat that I'm absolutely not putting Ed "at fault" for anything here -- I'm talking about comments like that one, in general.

Everybody judges things, we on HN perhaps most of all. That's fine, it's part of our nature. However, we really need to think it over before we declare our judgement in a comment on a public forum, especially when it's likely that we aren't fully aware of the situation we're judging.

> If that's the case then my comment will not have been particularly relevant, sorry about that.

Hey man, no worries. Glad we got it sorted.

Except that a large, negative comment from a widely respected HN poster is a pretty effective anti-donation.

> when you have no damn idea what the consequences are

Because this is unprecedented. People are still shocked at the excessive nature of the charges. No one expected it. To expect everything to be so severe would be paranoia.

I guess that's fair. I honestly hadn't considered that; I've had enough dealings with the justice system to know that it's impossible to overestimate the damage they're willing to do to someone's life when it suits them.