Shadowbanning means banning someone without telling them. I just told you.
I did look at the replies and it's true that some of them were terrible and against the site guidelines, but your account was by far the greatest problem, given that you initiated a flamewar and perpetuated it with 20+ comments. Pointing the finger at others, when you've broken the rules so badly yourself, is not a good look. One might mention individual responsibility as a value here.
I think you make an interesting point about ideological asymmetry. Maybe there is a systemic factor in that way—or maybe it's just that certain classes of account are more likely to fulminate and otherwise break the rules ("commit more crimes", as some might say in another context)—or maybe both? I don't know, and I don't see what difference it would make to moderation. Should the fire department hose two sides of a burning house equally, regardless of which way the wind is blowing, lest it give an appearance of bias? It's our job to prevent this place from burning itself down. For that we have certain rules and we apply them as evenhandedly as we know how. That involves pointing the hose where the fire is.
If you or anyone thinks the rules aren't optimal, I'd be happy to hear suggestions for better rules—as long as everyone understands that "better" has a clear definition in HN's context, because we're optimizing for one specific thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
I did look at the replies and it's true that some of them were terrible and against the site guidelines, but your account was by far the greatest problem, given that you initiated a flamewar and perpetuated it with 20+ comments. Pointing the finger at others, when you've broken the rules so badly yourself, is not a good look. One might mention individual responsibility as a value here.
I think you make an interesting point about ideological asymmetry. Maybe there is a systemic factor in that way—or maybe it's just that certain classes of account are more likely to fulminate and otherwise break the rules ("commit more crimes", as some might say in another context)—or maybe both? I don't know, and I don't see what difference it would make to moderation. Should the fire department hose two sides of a burning house equally, regardless of which way the wind is blowing, lest it give an appearance of bias? It's our job to prevent this place from burning itself down. For that we have certain rules and we apply them as evenhandedly as we know how. That involves pointing the hose where the fire is.
If you or anyone thinks the rules aren't optimal, I'd be happy to hear suggestions for better rules—as long as everyone understands that "better" has a clear definition in HN's context, because we're optimizing for one specific thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).