idk Dan, maybe playing nice with the person you banned hours earlier who came back to throw racial insults at you isn't gonna lead to a redemption arc.
I should have been clearer; being nice to an obvious troll that you banned just a short while earlier is likely to invite more trolling rather than less, which negatively impacts everyone else. It's great that you're not taking it personally, but it doesn't seem good for HN.
Ah I see. Yes, that's a risk, but I don't see it playing out in practice and I have to prioritize direct experience with HN. The thing that matters here is not to be nice to trolls or even to convince them of anything (though that's a nice, if rare, side effect), but rather to answer criticisms in a way that the bulk of the community finds reasonable and fair.
This is one of the biggest things we can do to bolster the health of the body politic or commons (or pick whatever term is good) here. It pays off hugely in good will and good faith. If the median HN reader sees me going out of my way to be neutral and answering criticism reasonably, that's a win. It's even more of a win when the criticism was rudely delivered.
In my experience, it's important to be nice (or at least neutral) when doing that, because otherwise the signals get crossed—am I providing accurate information or venting frustration? The hivemind definitely doesn't like it when the moderator does the latter, so I try to avoid it to the extent possible (and I suck at it a lot of the time.)
