I'm not certain that Hacker News really needs your defense. Let's hear what KickStarter has to say about this.

If Daniella Jaeger indeed said "If there is any chance that Rachel will receive spam from a stalker on her project, she should not create one. We simply cannot allow a project to become a forum for rampant spam, as her past project became." then she should apologize and look at the way that the project handles this sort of thing in the future.

If she never said this, then this has been a big beatup. Either way, Daniella needs to respond to this allegation.

> I'm not certain that Hacker News really needs your defense.

You're wrong. It does. People need to be told, flat out, the this isn't a board that wants nor appreciates mob-mentality. It promotes reason and rationality. As a long* time member of HN, threads like this are a blight. Not because of the parties involved, but because we are doing things we abhor in others.

> Either way, Daniella needs to respond to this allegation.

I hate that mentality. I understand the reasoning, but essentially we are requiring people to respond to trolls. I say this within the context of what we know: a unsubstantiated blog post is claiming certain things. There are numerous steps that could be taken to provide more proof, and I think it's important that evidence is provided to avoid these types of issues.

Basically, I see this as the same as me accusing Rachel of setting this all up as a marketing stunt. And then posting some italicized text and claiming it's from her. It's equally as credible as things stand now.

Edit: * I just want to add that I don't presume that it needs my help. Rather, every member is, in their own way, responsible for moderating HN. It can only be defended by it's users.

I see no problem with expecting people to say "nope." to credible-seeming trolls. It takes mere seconds and provides strong evidence to discredit the troll in the future. And you calling it a marketing stunt is a very different situation because you have a clear motivation of rhetorical device to fake an email and you're not staking your reputation on it.

Finally, I don't think anyone here is suggesting taking action against kickstarter without hearing what they say. It's a big "wow, this is a bad way to behave kickstarter". And they could reply "yes, good thing we didn't do that".

> And you calling it a marketing stunt is a very different situation because you have a clear motivation of rhetorical device to fake an email and you're not staking your reputation on it.

Whoa. I never said that. I never suggested it, and suggesting I said that is completely dishonest and reprehensible*.

I'm going to assume you misread what I've written. I've said that there are many possibilities that could explain these actions, besides the truth, one of those being a publicity stunt. That, however, is no where near an accusation, merely speculation, and does not represent my believe in any way.

Edit: This sounds like I'm calling you dishonest and reprehensible. That's not accurate. That would be if you were doing it on purpose. I just believe you misread what I wrote. Just being clear.

I am sorry. I was unclear there and I think I got things a bit confused as I replied. What I meant to say there is that your italic fake-quote that the blog post was a lie was a very different etc. I think I misremembered there being a mention of it being a stunt inside the fake-quote. Either way, I'm sorry I worded that unclearly. I wasn't talking about your actual opinion there, I was talking about your fake-quote.

Kickstarter doesn't agree with your reasoning, as they have just apologized for their response. I think it's reasonable that they were called out on what they stated to Rachel Marone, and they have now apologized.

Both Rachel and Kickstarter have done the right thing here.