[puredemo]

What part(s) do you consider dross?

To me, "flamewar material" sounds like "stuff many people would disagree with" [1] and "tedious posturing" sounds like, "Unfortunate realities I don't like discussing," so if you could quote [2] the specific part that breaks the rules it would help.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[2] http://paulgraham.com/okung.html

[dang]

Casual tossing of flamewar material: "I could not care less when violent criminals like Michael Brown get shot by the police".

Tedious ideological posturing: "Bring on the disdain because I don't agree with the shallow indoctrination of, "WE NEED TO LOVE EVERYONE.""

Please edit such drama-mongering out of your comments here. It's unsubstantive and lowers the signal-noise ratio of the threads, both by adding noise itself and by evoking it from others.

[puredemo]

Well, I appreciate the response, but as you might have guessed I disagree with your approach and assumptions.

Flamewar material could basically be any contestable subject people get passionate about. Of course people online will disagree about contentious ideas, that doesn't automatically make it a "flamewar topic" as you seem to think, unless you plan to flag and remove all impassioned speech here.

Typically for forum moderation, flamewars involve a slew of personal attacks, which are simply not present in my quote. I said something ideologically controversial, but I didn't flame or personally attack anyone.

My statement also wasn't casual. Since the BLM movement was founded on the Michael Brown case, I've put a fair amount of time and consideration into an analysis of what happened in the case and how I should feel about it and the ongoing protests -- protests that shut down the freeway here in SF for hours yesterday, I might add.

My overall conclusion is as stated, and that directly relates to the initial post about empathy online -- it's an completely valid example where displaying a lack of empathy on a given subject is very controversial, which you have certainly reaffirmed here. To you, it's such a controversial (read: not politically correct) opinion (to refuse to show empathy towards a perceived victim) that you, as a moderator, felt the need to denigrate the perspective and flag the comment as off-topic (which it wasn't).

>Tedious ideological posturing

I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, and for what it's worth you've labeled this quote more accurately, but it's still extremely subjective (bordering on facile name-calling) to label what I said that way. What you find tedious others might find empowering, in that they don't have to put the world's problems on their shoulders and feel sad about every victim narrative bandied about on the news. Or people could have a slew of other emotions.

I feel like you're 100% okay with ideological posturing when it's politically correct and aligns with your worldview, and 100% not okay with it when is is misaligned with your worldview. That's the definition of bias. You also tend to resort to tone policing to justify acting on your biases when any argument rubs you the wrong way. That's not good moderation, imo.

Removing personal attacks is fine, sure. Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it -- that's disappointing to see on HN. Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.