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I'm not sure how I feel about anonymous throwaway accounts posting unflattering anecdotes about someone. None of us spectators have any way of judging what happened for ourselves, and without a name or at least a posting history attached it's hard to take these grievances too seriously.


Most organizations past a certain size will provide for anonymous feedback internally both among peers and up the org chart. Why do you think this is? Why do you think most organizations also have policies providing for penalties, including dismissal, for retaliation against people who provide honest feedback?

It's because sometimes people can be vindictive, petty assholes, and it's a small world. FWIW it does seem like Jared just had too much on his plate at the time - no big deal. But shame on you for calling someone out for providing honest feedback (which was well-received, at that), just because it was anonymous.


> It's because sometimes people can be vindictive, petty assholes, and it's a small world.

Yes, and posting anonymous untrue grievances in a public forum is exactly the kind of thing that a vindictive person might do. Which is why I don't support that when there is no way for anyone to evaluate the truth of what is being said. I agree with you that the original complaints seems likely to be truthful given Jared's response, but the fact that Jared validated one also opens up the possibility that other people would pile on untruthfully. I don't like it personally.

Anonymous feedback within an organization is a very different thing than posting something like this publicly. I don't even care specifically whether it has a name attached; if it was an anonymous account that had some other posting history, a person could at least look at the other comments posted by this person and decide for themselves whether this person comes off as someone with an axe to grind or not.


> But shame on you

Please don't post uncivil comments to Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


How would I express that sentiment civilly, then? The only intent of that statement was to convey "I think you should feel some shame for what you've done with your post." It seems like a perfectly civil statement to me - I am not insulting anyone here - so I'm honestly wondering. I disagree that I've stepped outside the guidelines here.

e: I've noticed you usually ignore responses like this. I hope you don't ignore this one.


You would express it civilly by making your comment be about the subject, not the person you're talking to. It's fine to say "I don't think it's right to do X", and explain why. It's not fine to say "Shame on you for X". That's an attempt to punish somebody. Shame is a social truncheon, and in civil discussion we don't pull weapons on one another.




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