I've read HN almost every day for the last 7 years. In that seven years, I don't recall ever reading a post that said something particularly slanderous about Zed. I have seen post after post about his Learning XXX the hard way, and, in fact, I've even purchased at least one as a result.
The one thing different about HN is that if you even slightly start to get overly negative on a post, you are downvoted into oblivion, and nobody sees what you've written.
So I'm really confused, Zed is upset that things that are negative are written about him (and I can appreciate that, who wouldn't be upset when negative things are written about them) - but the one place he criticizes, happens to be the one place on the internet (that I'm familiar with), where slanderous, objectionable, heck, off tone comments are censored by the community.
Because that's what I love about HN - the community keeps the tone civil, reasonably polite, and holds commentators accountable for their contributions, to the point of hell banning anybody who does draw too much ire.
I think Zed's criticism is a little off base this time.
I thought his point was mostly about the credibility and influence carried by negative comments on HN - probably thanks to both its link to YC and the presence of highly regarded industry figures in the comments. So a negative comment on HN might have a more tangible effect on the man's professional life compared to a negative comment on, say, reddit.
Disclaimer: I honestly don't know how bad things used to be. By the time I started visiting HN in earnest, dang et al. were in charge, so I'm assuming a fair bit of moderation takes place now.
I bought a (paper, hardback) copy of Learn Python the Hard Way as a result of seeing a post about the book on this forum. Nice pedagogy, nice template, font a bit small but I have reading glasses.
I just clicked on that - here was what the top comment had to say about Zed:
"Zed is known as one of the most prolific and capable software engineers around and I have heard his C code for Mongrel 2 server https://github.com/zedshaw/mongrel2 described as being amongst some of the best examples of C code to study, learn and understand (trying to find the link that said that). I hold his work in high regard."
Well he's writing that way. Did you even read the post? He insults the entire HN community for stuff that most people can't even recall or find evidence of.
Also, if you read the post it sounds like he's not a very active user. He is likely completely disconnected from how this community works.
> He has nearly 9000 karma which you don't get by being completely disconnected from how this community works.
Sure you can. Karma is mostly an indicator of tending to post things that are popular, and there's a pretty big bonus to that if you happen to have name recognition as a popular figure. If you're a popular figure and your natural inclination in writing is in a direction which would be generally well-received on HN, you can get lots of karma whether or not you have much understanding of the community.
(Of course, if you wanted to maximize your karma, developing an understanding of the community would help. But that understanding isn't a necessary precondition to getting a high karma score.)
While I can't speak for zedshaw, I think the problem with HN is that while it, as you say, shuns and bans anyone who speaks in an aggressive tone or who directly vituperates others, it also allows (and often supports, with upvotes) one to completely slander someone as long as they do it in a calm and reasonable tone.
If that is an example of the "slander" Zed speaks of, his response is way overboard. It has that "more hacker than thou" tone that I find annoying in anyone (and most annoying when I catch myself using it, which is often), but I can't imagine anyone would consider it slanderous. And, it is by a no-name account, which, I suspect, makes everyone somewhat less likely to pay it any mind. The idea that something like that constitutes a years-long campaign of defamation against Zed is worryingly like paranoia.
From what I can tell, I do believe that Zed Shaw has experienced abuse from a larger community over a few years, I think starting with members of the Ruby community. Some might say that Zed fans the flames of controversy by reciprocating with insults.
Perhaps he sounds paranoid because he has nobody concrete to point a finger at, which is part of the nature of being famous on the internet.
I spent a little time browsing Zed's comment history (after seeing his reply to the comment you linked). It does seem to be representative of the kind of comment Zed calls "slanderous", at least in the past year or so. Perhaps there's something else, or perhaps there are comments that Zed did not respond to, that are actually problematic in some way. But, what I see is a polite but somewhat negative review of one of Zed's books. If that is "slander", then I have slandered Steve Jobs so many times it's not funny.
We don't remove the comment scores actually :) For the first 10 days of a comment's life, HN's API always returns 0: so we index 0. After 10 days, comment scores are visible and should be updated in the index.
The one thing different about HN is that if you even slightly start to get overly negative on a post, you are downvoted into oblivion, and nobody sees what you've written.
So I'm really confused, Zed is upset that things that are negative are written about him (and I can appreciate that, who wouldn't be upset when negative things are written about them) - but the one place he criticizes, happens to be the one place on the internet (that I'm familiar with), where slanderous, objectionable, heck, off tone comments are censored by the community.
Because that's what I love about HN - the community keeps the tone civil, reasonably polite, and holds commentators accountable for their contributions, to the point of hell banning anybody who does draw too much ire.
I think Zed's criticism is a little off base this time.