asking questions is also a well-known tactic for getting information. how do you figure out there's ill intent?

Like everything else in life, by using contextual clues and judging the content of the questions.

It's quite obvious when someone asks you questions with ill intent.

No, it is not obvious at all if you are not able to read minds. It never is and even suggesting bad faith is usually regarded as a faux pas.

You believe the example was asked in bad faith? I heavily doubt it, it is a pure insinuation. I believe you are just walrussing here.

edit: Never mind, "walrussing" allegedly does exist. But I believe the criticism still can be understood.

You don’t have to be able to read minds to see context clues and use intuition. Some even call those basic life skills.

Just because you can’t does not make it impossible.

> You believe the example was asked in bad faith?

When, exactly, did I claim that? Show me the exact quote because it doesn’t exist.

Making up things other said is a very obvious way to tell if someone is coming with bad intent.

> You don’t have to be able to read minds to see context clues and use intuition.

Intuition yields belief, but beliefs and knowledge are not the same even though they are typically indistinguishable to the one who holds them.

When its an excuse for bad behavior. If someone is being told, "You are being disruptive to this forum" and the response is, "I'm just asking questions". Then you know its a red flag.

Asking the rationale for drastic action is quite reasonable and he’s very different from asking why somebody doesn’t like you and chasing them around per the webcomic you’re referencing.

I wasn't asking questions. I was making a categorical statement of objective reality: at the time it was physically impossible to know how many doses of the vaccine, on what schedule, would achieve the best balance of effectiveness vs. safety.

This was the content of my comment, which got me banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus.

You asked if you were being toxic.

I answered yes. As someone who has built communities online and in the real world, you are someone that, at best, needs careful management. I wouldn’t willingly include you in a team or community. I’ve done life or death stuff with the teams I built, I’m pretty good at this.

From reading through here plenty of other people think similarly. You are more willing to argue than you are to hear that your behavior is problematic. Even after asking specifically, and being told so.

You are exceptionally talented at this. You have literally dozens of people bickering. Congrats.

Unambiguously, I consider you toxic.

What is your definition of toxic here?

Someone who has a strong opinion and defends it?

Someone whose basis for their strong opinion you’ve deemed woefully insufficient?

Someone who doesn’t change their strong opinion when presented with a dozen comments against it and a similar number for it?

That HN commenters are divided on my opinion isn’t toxic: it demonstrates it’s an issue with Reddit that’s affected half of those who’ve spoken up and it’s left us annoyed, shamed, or slighted. That we’re discussing it here demonstrates it’s a Reddit-specific problem.

If my behavior is problematic, then why is it only problematic on Reddit? On HN, apart from this thread, when someone disagrees with me they don’t reach for any -ist or -ic words (“toxic”, “problematic”) to describe me: they disagree with the comment on its own merits.

What does “problematic” even mean, other than that it’s bad and I should feel bad?

Calling someone toxic, problematic, racist, homophobic, etc allows for no defense because they can’t prove evidence of absence. “I’m not problematically toxic and here’s the proof…??”.

Lucky we are not building medical devices here. I’m not interviewing to be on your team in a work environment.

Instead this is an example of the kind of topic that is interesting to discuss casually on HN with other hackers.

The benefit of HN, unlike Reddit, is that disagreeing with someone doesn’t also turn them into a cartoon villain who must be vanquished. People here are allowed to be wrong without also being -ists, -ics, or assholes.

This post comes across as pretty judgemental. I'm not sure if ad hominen attacks like this are contributing to the conversation.

Normally I would refrain.

Here’s what I was originally responding to.

> Does it seem to you like the kind of person you’re interacting with is reasonable here but unreasonable to the point of group toxicity elsewhere? Or that I'm unreasonable here?

This isn’t an ad hominem attack. He asked for a judgment on his personal behavior.

Well, not the conversation maybe, but if this sort of thing was banned we would have much less opportunity to study the phenomenon.