But does this person reaching out to Troy truly qualify as a “bad actor”? Maybe the attempted process of reporting the “bug” makes them an asshole but I wouldn’t go as far as bad actor. I was honestly kind of surprised to be reading this from Troy. I’m sure he does see loads of these things but this still seems sort of petty. Or if not petty at least not interesting enough to be on HN.
The first problem, as Troy pointed out, is that this sort of behavior poisons attempts to create a straightforward and useful bug-reporting mechanism, as anything that is straightforward gets buried in bogus beg reports.
The second potential problem (I do not know if it applies to this particular person) is that the beggar may be on the lookout for an uninformed and manipulatable person who can be comprehensively scammed.
If you don't think this should be on HN you can choose not to vote for it or avoid future links to troyhunt.com.
> If you don't think this should be on HN you can choose not to vote for it or avoid future links to troyhunt.com.
I am well aware of that and I imagine you know that. Please don't be pedantic.
Troy's content is typically high quality and engaging (i.e., I won't be avoiding it). This is not and I felt that on it's own was worth a comment (and is even more interesting than the post itself).
You can express your opinion of an article without implying that it should not even come up for discussion (which would, of course, have removed your means of expressing your disapproval to an audience that has, by its upvotes and participation in this discussion, demonstrated that the article does belong here! Arguably, it belongs here precisely because of the controversial ethical issue.)
You are clearly aware of the pointlessness of complaints couched in this manner, yet you chose to do so anyway. Are you also aware that the guidelines for HN specifically deprecate this sort of thing? Moderating a public forum is a difficult task, Dang does a great job, and, while I do not think you intended it, it can come across as somewhat disrespectful to express disapproval of the content of an article by suggesting that his moderation didn't match one's particular point of view.
