I think rather alot of people like Zed Shaw and step to his defence.
Dear Paul
121–130 of 184 posts
Re: Dear Paul
#122I'd be interested to know how often that video got posted, and how many upvotes it got each time, and how many flags etc it got.
And Zed uses circular reasoning: he uses himself as an example of a mean poster who gets upvotes but then complains when HN downvotes or flags his meanness.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2440939
> Over the years here and before I started commenting people called me a cocksucker, cock, asshole, douchebag, and every mean ass thing you can imagine. They do it to other people too, and I sure as hell don't see anyone getting flagged or kicked off. If you pick someone unpopular to insult you're totally allowed to be a dick here.
i'd love to see an example comment of someone calling someone sle one of those names and not being downvoted or flagged for it (I guess with the exception of powerful people where a certain amount of punching up is tolerated). More specifically I'd like to see a post where someone made comments like that about Zed Shaw.
Here's one from six years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703219
And here's one from two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806864
Searching for [zed shaw asshole] returns a bunch of people saying that he isn't an asshole; or that he's only an asshole to people who attack him; or that he's sometimes justifiably an asshole. It also returns a lot of zed shaw calling other people assholes.
Re: Dear Paul
#123[deleted]
Re: Dear Paul
#124I still don't understand HN's algo. The current 1st post has 301 points in 7 hrs while this post has 301 points in 3 hours but is in the second page ??
Re: Dear Paul
#125I still don't understand HN's algo. The current 1st post has 301 points in 7 hrs while this post has 301 points in 3 hours but is in the second page ??
My guess is that it's being flagged (see the current top comment)
Re: Dear Paul
#126I still don't understand HN's algo. The current 1st post has 301 points in 7 hrs while this post has 301 points in 3 hours but is in the second page ??
Posts like this get massive upvotes but they also get massive flags. The upvotes make the post go up and the flags make it go down. That's what happened here.
Re: Dear Paul
#127Ever since he (Zed) was a complete asshole to Bagder (of cURL) I can't take him serious. He is just an abusive asshole with some sort of superiority complex. I would link to the conversation but it was on twitter (so probably gone by now).
Re: Dear Paul
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The rule is no gratuitous negativity. You can be negative, just try to at least be constructive about it" "The rule is no gratuitous negativity you stupid fuck. You can be negative, just try to be constructive". Which sentence do you think is goig to derail conversations and lead to useless but heated argument?
If people are not obsessively looking for reasons to be offended (which kind of might hint about subtle underlying psychological problems) - neither.
I'm sorry, I felt I also had to jump on the bandwagon. For me it's got nothing to do with psychological problems, I was just heavily put off by the incredibly macho and sexist tone (many paragraphs contain references to size of male genitalia).
I'm with the GP post; write after having cooled down. That doesn't have to turn it into PR speak at all, and it might have as a side-effect that it'll be taken to heart by more readers.
But that's just my €0.02.
Re: Dear Paul
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
user: zedshaw created: 2224 days ago karma: 8960 Yes, I'm sure he thinks one comment is representative of the entire HN community.
Well he's writing that way. Did you even read the post? He insults the entire HN community for stuff that most people can't even recall or find evidence of. Also, if you read the post it sounds like he's not a very active user. He is likely completely disconnected from how this community works.
He has nearly 9000 karma which you don't get by being completely disconnected from how this community works.
Re: Dear Paul
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I can't speak for zedshaw, I think the problem with HN is that while it, as you say, shuns and bans anyone who speaks in an aggressive tone or who directly vituperates others, it also allows (and often supports, with upvotes) one to completely slander someone as long as they do it in a calm and reasonable tone. As an example, specifically regarding anonymous accounts and zedshaw: https://news.ycombinator.com/it…
If that is an example of the "slander" Zed speaks of, his response is way overboard. It has that "more hacker than thou" tone that I find annoying in anyone (and most annoying when I catch myself using it, which is often), but I can't imagine anyone would consider it slanderous. And, it is by a no-name account, which, I suspect, makes everyone somewhat less likely to pay it any mind. The idea that something like that…
Anon1385 has been here 1500 days and has over 8000 karma.
Algolia has removed the comment scores from search so I don't know if that comment got any upvotes, but it's not grey.