I'm sure you have some good reason for feeling that strongly, but please don't let it translate into abusing the comment system here. You're going way over the top and breaking the site guidelines badly. Please stop.
I guess I’m just a little disturbed people on here think joking about war crimes is all in good fun and a key site moderator accused me of violating norms for point that out. I know you think you’re doing your best to create a community for civil discussion, but by what seems closer to the truth is this site is gradually becoming an IDW echo chamber.
You were breaking the site guidelines by repeatedly posting off-topic, unsubstantive flamebait. Asking you not to do that is bog-standard moderation. There's no ideological implication—we'd ask you to stop in the same way if you were posting that way about literally anything.
What is my end of things? The end where people don’t like making jokes about war crimes against journalists? I’m sorry that expressing that rained on your parade. I guess I should be canceled for it.
I understand your frustration, I want to mention that I for example have been on the receiving end of a ton of downvotes and the occasional warning from the site moderator here.
From my perspective the issue in this thread isn’t your content, it is your wording. This site tries to optimize for thoughtful discussion. One non-obvious aspect of this is that even well intentioned points that have a good moral stance can do much harm to discussions if the wording gets other people worked up.
I actually agree with you that Alexander’s joke was a bit over the line.
The thing is, people have trouble hearing you on this if phrasing or choice of words sets them off.
I think, if you truly believe passionately in your point, it is ethical to attempt to review your choice of words and figure out how to turn the dial towards persuasive and away from incendiary.
I agree that my wording probably set people off-- I definitely got a bit tilted after 4 or 5 different people decided to explain to me that the problem was I just didn't get the joke. My original comment though was pretty much just noting what had been said the article though. This was deemed an attempt to start a flamewar by dang.
I think fostering a community for thoughtful and civil discussion is a noble goal. The trouble is I don't think you achieve a thoughtful discussion by labeling as inflammatory any criticism of people this community venerates.
You posted 3 or 4 escalating comments that were way over the top. That's obviously not ok, and it's all I was reacting to. Nothing else. Please don't do it again. That's all.
"Labeling as inflammatory any criticism of people this community venerates" is not a thing. Actually there's not even such a thing as "people this community venerates". Any $person venerated by some is criticized by others, and you'll find plenty of such criticism in HN threads.
If you have that impression, you might be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor..., a form of sample bias where the massively greater impact of the data points one dislikes leads to false feelings of generality. We all seem to suffer from this.
None of this is hard to understand, so please stop now. Everybody goes on tilt at some point—I certainly have. The main thing is just to learn from it and avoid doing it again.
What I learned from it is that it this isn't a community I want to participate in. It will be easier now for everyone here to enjoy jokes about awful things they would do journalists if only it weren't for the Geneva conventions without feeling guilty.
It’s a critical component to certain writers’ style. If we all take everything literally those writers would become more boring.