I'm afraid you're underestimating the provocation and aggression in your comments by quite a lot. That's normal in the sense that everyone does it, but it's important to understand how that dynamic works if you want to use HN appropriately (and therefore not get banned).
Here's how it works: people underestimate their own provocations by at least 10x and overestimate the other side's provocations by another 10x, leading to a 100x skew (I'm speaking metaphorically of course) between their own perception and how things appear to an ordinary reader. It's basically a case of "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" - a lot closer. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This is how we end up getting flamewars in which all the participants are certain that their contributions are the reasonable ones, the other side started it, and the only thing the mods need to do is put a stop to the bad behavior of the others.
As for the other two accounts you were asking about, the simple answer is I hadn't looked at their comment histories yet. All three of you are on the wrong side of the line in a similar way, so the moderation response is more or less the same in each case—once we've seen the data, that is. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, or even 10% of what gets posted here.
It's common for people to see a post or an account which hasn't been publicly moderated and jump to the conclusion that the mods must be condoning it and therefore taking the other side. That's a non sequitur. By far the most likely explanation is that we didn't see it.
Ok, but when you respond simply by reporting more of your enemies without doing anything to indicate that you've processed my reply or that you care about the intended spirit of the site, I find that a bit demoralizing.
I'm sure you can understand that it gets distasteful after a while when people keep pointing the mods at their political opponents. That's not in the intended spirit of the site as a whole.
Also, the two proper ways to point the mods at things is to either flag a post (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag) or email hn@ycombinator.com. If you want to be sure that we take a look at something, you should do the latter, because the number of posts that get flagged is quite large.
Posting comments in the thread reporting on other users' bad behavior is not just off topic, it's guaranteed to be provocative in its own right, so we'd rather that people not do that.
Oh, I apologize for that -- I see your point and haven't replied because I have no objections)
> I'm sure you can understand that it gets distasteful after a while when people keep pointing the mods at their political opponents. That's not in the intended spirit of the site as a whole.
First you say that accounts like that get a free pass only because you missed them, now when I've made sure you haven't missed them -- it's distasteful? I see where you are coming from, but I find fairness to be important.
>If you want to be sure that we take a look at something
No, not really. Normally I'm for freedom of speech but sometimes I want to make a point.
Here's how it works: people underestimate their own provocations by at least 10x and overestimate the other side's provocations by another 10x, leading to a 100x skew (I'm speaking metaphorically of course) between their own perception and how things appear to an ordinary reader. It's basically a case of "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" - a lot closer. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This is how we end up getting flamewars in which all the participants are certain that their contributions are the reasonable ones, the other side started it, and the only thing the mods need to do is put a stop to the bad behavior of the others.
As for the other two accounts you were asking about, the simple answer is I hadn't looked at their comment histories yet. All three of you are on the wrong side of the line in a similar way, so the moderation response is more or less the same in each case—once we've seen the data, that is. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, or even 10% of what gets posted here.
It's common for people to see a post or an account which hasn't been publicly moderated and jump to the conclusion that the mods must be condoning it and therefore taking the other side. That's a non sequitur. By far the most likely explanation is that we didn't see it.