PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

> @theshawwn: [dang] has had a habit of silencing some long-standing members of HN: yummyfajitas, mtgx, myself – for what seem to be inconsistent reasons. He also applies penalties that last for years, and people are too afraid to say anything. I feel bad saying this, but when Dan retires, I'll feel relieved. It's hard to overstate just how authoritarian he is, underneath that disarming personality. He reads every comment. You can't say anything without speaking to Dan, indirectly.

Can some explain/clarify?

(I have no connection to the mods, all of this is just me guessing.)

People who behave poorly, especially if it's something they've done for a long time, can dislike being held to account for that. dang has a range of tools available, and these get used to hold people to account for their destructive behaviours. These people get increasing levels of warnings before they eventually get banned.

And then, when they've been banned, they see some other account that posts similar content that hasn't been banned and they say "inconsistent!". What they've missed is the "yet" part of "hasn't been banned yet" -- that other account may be banned in future, or if they drop the destructive behaviour they may have all the measures removed.

> He also applies penalties that last for years, and people are too afraid to say anything.

I don't know what dang's email account is like but I'm guessing it's full of people who are not too afraid to say anything.

> What they've missed is the "yet" part of "hasn't been banned yet" -- that other account may be banned in future, or if they drop the destructive behaviour they may have all the measures removed.

That's a problem though. If you let some murderers roam free and when somebody says "you arrested me when I murdered somebody, why aren't you arresting them", you say "hey, you don't know that we don't arrest them, we're just haven't arrested them yet. Please wait 100 years to see whether we really don't arrest them".

I don't know what the original comment was about etc, but "maybe it'll eventually be consistent" isn't a good answer to claims of inconsistency. Maybe it will, but it probably won't. If behavior is treated differently, the best prediction is that it will continue to be treated differently.