Why is the NATO bombing campaign such a pain point for Russians like you? The wars in Yugoslavia had ravaged for a decade, killed some 140 000 people and forced millions to flee their homes. A short aerial bombing campaign that lasted mere weeks and claimed only around 500 lives put an end to that for good. It is one of the best examples of foreign interference stopping genocide, yet you keep bringing it up as if it was some great injustice. Why?
Please don't perpetuate flamewars like this on HN, and please don't cross into nationalistic attack on a fellow user, regardless of their (or your) nationality.
Having replied as I did to the other user I feel I should add that you also are welcome here. The two of you are equally welcome, but we need you both to follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I just honestly don't understand what the issue is with NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and why Russians in particular are so butthurt about it. During some of the worst massacres in Yugoslavia, more people were murdered in the span of a few days than died during the entire aerial campaign. The campaign put a decisive end to wars, and the following decades have brought massive success. Former parts of Yugoslavia like Croatia are now advanced high-income countries.
We see passive-aggressive hints about NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on HN all the time, but rarely anyone explains where that comes from. I can understand why Serbians could be bitter - the campaign had several horrible incidents like the passenger train that got hit during a strike on a railway bridge - but why are Russians complaining more than anyone else about a thing that happened 25 years ago, thousands of miles away, to people they have no relation with? I'd really like to get an answer to that.
> why $nation in particular are so butthurt about it
With this you did again exactly what I just asked you to stop doing. That's not cool.
The historical details you're bringing up are irrelevant to whether you're breaking HN's rules or not—for moderation purposes none of that matters. What matters is that making provocative, pejorative, or scornful references to other countries or their people is nationalistic flamebait which leads to hellthreads, which we don't want on HN. I don't think this is at all hard to understand, so no more of this please.
In addition to the above: having just taken a look at your commenting history, it's clear that you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. Just as I said to the other user, that's not allowed on HN and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which side you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> No matter how self-evidently full of excrement their droppings here may be.
With this you do exactly what we're asking commenters to avoid doing on HN. It's not as bad as if you were hurling the insult directly at someone, but it's not so different either—as the reply you got demonstrated.
The issue isn't that we shouldn't reference each other's nationality—it's that we should be open, curious and respectful with each other, most of all when it comes to divisive topics. When people start talking about other people's countries scornfully or aggressively or snarkily, that's when it becomes flamebait and a moderation issue.
In addition to the above: having just taken a look at your commenting history, it's clear that you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. Just as I said to the other users, that's not allowed on HN and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which side you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
When people start talking about other people's countries scornfully or aggressively or snarkily, that's when it becomes flamebait and a moderation issue.
Can you point to even a single instance where I have done this, please?
Meaning -- in reference to the country or its people per se (as opposed to the actions or ideology of the people who happen to be running it; or perhaps entirely reasonable references to what a measured portion of the population might say or think, as can be easily verified by numerous news reports)?
If not -- then why are you setting forth the implication that this is something I have done?
And lasties -- a lot of postings here (or excerpts from them) are plainly BS. Whether the poster is simply naive, or has less charitable motivations -- there's simply no mistaking it.
I totally get that labeling these cases as such continuously makes for bad reading; and of course one should never to so spuriously. But what is so wrong or uncivil (or even "snarky") about pointing out this simple fact, in egregious cases when there's just no ifs, buts or mitigating factors about it?
Or is just the fecal labeling? Would you prefer we stick to more G-rated terminology like "nonsense" and "balderdash"? I suppose I could live with that.
"self-evidently full of excrement their droppings" seemed both scornful and snarky to me.
(Edit: you put in the last part of your comment while I was writing the below, so I'll respond with an edit too. No, it's not ok to replace that language with words like "nonsense" or "balderdash". Those still count as name-calling in the sense that https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html uses the term; and they don't solve the real problem. Since my reply below is an attempt to explain the real problem, I won't go further here.)
> a lot of postings here (or excerpts from them) are plainly BS
In principle I agree because that's what human beings do, but I don't agree with your word "plainly". That implies that there exists an objective perspective that nearly everyone can easily agree on, as long as they're in good faith. But there's no such perspective—not on divisive topics. The situation is far from that.
> But is so wrong or uncivil about pointing out this simple fact
What counts as BS vs. not-BS, or true vs. false, is no "simple fact"—it's the core of the hardest problem. If you treat it as a simple fact (for example, "I'll just point out the simple fact that what you said is BS"), you're likely to fall into flamebait without intending to.
It's better to explain patiently and respectfully why you believe someone is wrong. That's what we want on HN: to correct false information with true information, and bad arguments with better arguments—always respectfully and assuming good faith.
> Whether the poster is simply naive, or has less charitable motivations
If there's one thing I've learned it's that internet commenters are much too quick to make assumptions about others' motivations. The trouble is that these assumptions don't feel like assumptions; they just feel like completely-obvious-observations. Of course the other side has their own completely-obvious-observations. This is how we end up with flamewars.
The solution is to refrain from making claims about other people's motivations, which you can't know because you don't have direct access to them, and which you're likely to be wrong about because we have so little information about each other from the tiny blobs of text that we're exchanging. Also, humans really dislike having their motivations commented on by others—so even if you've assessed them correctly, it's one of the worst tacks you can take. As a bonus, not doing so will make your comments more likely to be substantive and less likely to break the site guidelines.
By the way, I think I noticed a pattern in the following phrases in your comment: "entirely reasonable", "easily verified", "plainly", "simply", "simple fact", "there's just no ifs, buts, or mitigating factors"; as well as "self evident" from your comment above.
To me these phrases suggest a belief that the material under discussion is somehow obvious or transparent, and that it's obvious what's true and what's false (at least on certain points—I get that you aren't saying this about everything).
When you have that feeling and then you encounter someone who's arguing against that simple/obvious/plain truth, you're almost forced to conclude something about the other person: they must be naive, disingenuous, obtuse—something like that—or maybe they're just dumb or bad. Why else would they deny the obvious?
What I'd love to persuade you of is that this is a bad position to be commenting from on the internet (where we know so little about each other and don't have pre-existing relationships). It's likely to make your comments seem dismissive and/or aggressive and/or personal, even as it will feel completely obvious to you that you're "simply" pointing out facts. That's again how we get flamewars.
Instead, we all need to realize that the world is a much, much, much bigger place than we thought. There are lots of people out there who have opposite views and feelings to our own, and who therefore have a different idea of what is obvious and transparent. This is not because they're disingenuous, obtuse, or dumb. It's because they have a different background than we do, and a different working set of information.
Evolutionarily we're hard-wired towards assuming that other people feel and look and think the same as we do. In the mythical primordial jungle, we didn't encounter many others; and if we did, we probably tried to kill them (and they us).
Now suddenly on the internet we're exposed, not just to a few more others, but to all the others: millions of others with totally different backgrounds, information, feelings. When we encounter them, our immediate reflex is the primordial fear of kill-or-be-killed—that's how hard-wiring works. And what is flamewar but the internet version of kill-or-be-killed?
What we need to do instead is learn: learn that our existing assumptions, beliefs, feelings are too small for this new situation; learn to pause our first responses rather than reflexively expressing them; learn to look for information that might not be obvious/simple/plain, and to be willing to receive such information from the other.
To me this is what Hacker News is about: an experiment in learning from each other, which first means tolerating each other: staying connected long enough to get over the initial response of "what kind of idiot, asshole, or sociopath is this" and move into an openness to "what could be the reasons why this person has such a different sense of what's obvious than I do?"
Tolerance is one of the vanilla virtues we all think we're practicing, but actually we've barely begun to realize what it is. Tolerance feels terrible. It means bearing the pressure that the other person is putting on you—just as a beam engineered to a certain tolerance is able to carry so much load without snapping. In human terms, tolerance means being willing to bear the "unpleasant manifestations of others" right up to your snapping point and then letting it stretch your snapping point. Not only is that not easy, it's one of the hardest things a person can do.
I ended up writing a mini-essay here. That sometimes happens. I hope it didn't stop being relevant to you!
I appreciate the detailed response, and will give it careful consideration.
I was hoping you could also respond to the question at the very top ("Can you point to even a single instance ...", up to the "If not, then why ..." part).
I'm not trying to split hairs here -- I'm really genuinely mystified by the apparent insinuation that I was responding to. That is, I don't see why would you bother to inject the phrase "When people start talking about other people's countries scornfully or aggressively" -- if you didn't think that was what you observed me doing.
At the same time I'm pretty that not only do I not talk about entire countries that way -- my language takes pains to avoid precisely such implications.
And just a slight addendum -- I have to say I'm a bit confused about what you mean by "political battle". Is it -- simply too many posts about politics (or history, which tends to get bloody and political)? Or just being too blunt about it? Is for example this post an instance of "political battle"?
I can see how it might look that way (especially if one has only vaguely heard of the political party I'm referring to, and hasn't looked into them in any detail). But I do believe that if one has done any homework at all on these folks -- then what I'm saying is pretty straightforward, and well, basically "obvious".
And in any case, while it certainly takes a position, it's not a pugnacious or uncivil statement I'm making there. The sibling post perhaps makes a better, less brusque explanation of the same basic point. But again, it's just stating major recent events that should be, well -- obvious to anyone who follows basic political events in that country.
I did respond to that question, right at the start; but I must not have been clear enough, so I'll try again. You asked for an example of where you had talked about someone's country scornfully, snarkily, or aggressively. My answer is that you did it in the very comment I was replying to, when you wrote:
> No matter how self-evidently full of excrement their droppings here may be.
I know you didn't express it that way explicitly, but context is important, and given the context, it was bound to come across that way. At least, it was how it landed with me when I first read it, and therefore I was unsurprised to see that it generated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40751052 as a response from the commenter most likely to hear it that way in this thread.
(tptacek gave you such a good answer about the other stuff that I don't want to try to add to it)
Thanks for clarifying -- but the referent of the implicit "they" in that snippet (via "their droppings") was an (abstract) commenter -- not their country or nationality!
Which is also something you'd also prefer we not do (that is: referring to individuals with implied scorn) -- and since you're asking nicely and it's your shop here, I will make assiduous efforts to catch myself before doing so, moving forward.
So perhaps what I should have said was something like this:
There's never a need to introduce (gratuitous) references to a commenter's nationality or other presumed essential traits... No matter how much we may object to the message or import of what they have written.
Which I would hope is a general policy we can all get behind on.
Just in case this is helpful (I saw this thread because I'm operantly conditioned to read Dan's comments to catch these essays he writes) --- you and I chatted a bunch up until about a month ago, when I sort of deliberately gave up on talking about Palestine on HN. In the intervening time until now, it looks like essentially all of your comments have been political.
I think there's, like, 2 things about that? First: the overwhelming majority of what the site talks about isn't politics, and you're basically not engaging with it. That's fine for some topics; like, if all you engaged with was woodworking or Russian literature, you'd be great. But the 2nd thing is that political threads tend inexorably to become toxic and alienating, in ways that mess up conversations about woodworking and Russian literature and LLMs and APL. People literally hold grudges from the political threads!
I think if you're going to exclusively comment on political threads, the bar is higher to stay assiduously within the guidelines, which basically means avoiding any kind of pejorative writing, even if it's oblique, about the commenters who disagree with you; write as if to a beloved but intractably wrong and somewhat thin-skinned uncle on an email thread just before Thanksgiving.
(Or just mix it up and back away from the political debates. I know that's hard; they're fun.)
I think if you're going to exclusively comment on political threads, the bar is higher to stay assiduously within the guidelines, which basically means avoiding any kind of pejorative writing, even if it's oblique, about the commenters who disagree with you; write as if to a beloved but intractably wrong and somewhat thin-skinned uncle on an email thread just before Thanksgiving.
This is most excellent advice. Thanks for chiming in.
There's nothing political or nationalistic at all in my comment.
My posts refer mostly to historical events, and attempt to correct the various (sometime rather bizarre) cognitive distortions that some people like to hold and promote about them. Along with many much milder and more innocuous misunderstandings.
Personally I eschew all forms of nationalism and nationalist rhetoric.
> It is one of the best examples of foreign interference
During my visit to Syria, Iraq and Libya, I noticed something common between the people of these countries - when I told them I was from the US, they all said: "Thank you for your bombing campaigns, we are liberated now!"
