It wouldn't surprise me at all if people have a secret "tone score" or similar that is assigned by moderators every time they make a nasty comment. And if that is the case, looking back on Church's comments it should be pretty clear that he'd have racked up one of the highest (lowest?) tone scores on HN. His comments are full of bitterness and hatred and scorn.
I ask you: would you want to secretly fail a secret grading criterion because something about you (tone, content (Church says it's content-based discrimination), et cetera) is not acceptable to a moderator?
Crucial points are: secret failing and secret grading. I wouldn't; I'd value the feedback, or get the heck out of there.
I don't know if Paul Graham is at fault for this, just to be clear about it.
Let's say he were. If he came out and said, "This is my message board, and therefore I assign personal penalties to the posts of those who oppose my economic interests", I would respect that.
What I can't respect is a silent personal penalty. That's ridiculous.
I've had this suspicion for months-- and I didn't voice it at first, because I don't much care-- but it's the latency difference and the looking into position of historical posts that made the case strong.
Why is this important? Why is it interesting? Because if I am being personally penalized, that means that the establishment is threatened by people like me who speak the truth about it. That would be a really positive sign.
In both these cases, your signal is that people are choosing not to associate with you. If nobody wants to hang around you, that's a good sign you're doing something that's objectionable to a lot of people. If some people do want to hang around you but others don't, treasure the friends you have and stop sweating the ones you don't.
Easy way to find out - info@ycombinator.com.
I'm curious about his sources and their reasons for not coming forth. That he doesn't cite them by name leads to me to think they choose to be anonymous. I'm not accusing them of something.
I dislike the title. I need more information to decide for myself whether Paul Graham owes Michael O. Church an apology. I think Paul Graham has a hand, albeit limited, in deciding whether he owes Church an apology.
One commenter on my blog suggested the problem may be an abuse of the "flag" option (which is only supposed to be used on spammers).
Paul Graham can respond to your post however he wants. He _could_ simply say, "I don't care."
You _want_ an apology because you _think_ you've been wronged. A blog post entitled, "I want an apology from Paul Graham" sounds whiny--I get it. Still, from where I'm sitting the title, even with the "probably" proviso, sounds like a power-grab that denies Paul Graham's ability to give whatever response he wants to you. Also it looks linkbaity to me[1].
[1] I dislike linkbaity titles. I don't deny their effectiveness; I clicked the link!
disclaimer: I teach public speaking professionally, so these kinds of less-than-explicitly-conscious word choices stick out to me.
Edited to emphasize that I agree with the spirit of his post, and that I'm nitpicking because I enjoy picking nits.
The first time my blog was penalized by HN (to my knowledge) was related to this post, "Don't waste your time in crappy startup jobs": http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/dont-waste-yo...
