Item — HN Reader

Just for the record: this is the quotation that the fellow managed to make disappear by flagging:

"Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." George Orwell, 1984

I really don't understand why someone sees the necessity to flag something like this. It perfectly fits the topic under discussion and doesn't violate any HN rule. This is world literature and can still inspire us to think seventy years later when we see which developments, considered dystopian in 1948, have become reality today in the described or analogous way.

1 comments

You posted the quote as a top-level comment with no other information (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23518702). That was obviously ideological flamebait, and really a form of name-calling, so it was rightly flagged.

Also, it's a red herring to bring up the fact that your top-level comment was flagged, when you degenerated into outrageous violations of the guidelines later in the thread. You can't do that, and if you do it again we will ban you—not because we're Orwellian villains, but because it's not ok to vandalize this site.

Would you please review the site guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As you can see, I am here under my real identity. I would not intentionally do what you are accusing me of here; and even having read your guidelines for several times now, and although I have also studied law and am used to reading and understanding regulations, I would not have come to the conclusion that my actions violate them; it's certainly not "obvious". At least now I understand how you interpret your guidelines in the present case.

Just for the record: a quick google search reveals that a couple of fellows did exactly the same as I did (e.g. 21094157, 23526791, 19959548). And nothing happened, no flagging, no admin intervention. I wonder how I came to the dubious honour of this special treatment. Honi soit qui mal y pense.