You should only flag things that are against the guidelines. In that regard, I don't see anything about this particular post that is problematic. It has some bile, sure, but the man makes some excellent points that we would benefit a lot from openly discussing here.
The best communities are those that self-reflect. They don't sweep the criticisms under the rug -- and I perceive your flagging as an attempt to do just that.
Zed will enter a community, will contribute, will leave and burn his bridges behind him preferably in such a way that those that are still in the community will be seen in as negative light as possible.
See also 'rails is a ghetto', this is in a way the HN variation on that theme.
HN does plenty of introspection but it doesn't need Zed to shoot some more holes in his own foot to tell it what is wrong with it, especially not because Zed himself was an active participant and in fact instigator of some of the nastiest stuff seen here on HN. Addressing Paul like this shows how out of touch he is with respect to the state of affairs on HN.
Note that Zed invariably attacks people when Zed's production is being criticised, this post is a nice example of exactly that.
Zed seems to feel he is personally under attack quite a bit of the time and I've learned to read through his rants with that in mind so if you apply that filter you might get something out of it.
How many little dick insults before you just consider the author to be inflammatory and small-minded? If this weren't for someone with a big name, it would have been dead on arrival.
Unfortunately, the RoR “community” and Zed have a history when it comes to penis-related insults. There was a time when you could add anyone you liked to a github project & they couldn’t block you, so a bunch of developers thought it would be funny to add Zed's github account to a project to draw ascii penises. Every time he’d remove himself, they’d add him to another one & so on.
Puerile? Yup. Also, possibly career sabotaging if a potential future employer looks at your github project list.
Yes, it’s easy for us to say “he should be the bigger person & not respond in kind” but on the flip side, we haven’t been on the receiving end of this kind of abusive behaviour.
> Yes, it’s easy for us to say “he should be the bigger person & not respond in kind” but on the flip side, we haven’t been on the receiving end of this kind of abusive behaviour.
But he's not responding in kind, because the people he is attacking "in kind" aren't the people who attacked him. And so, insofar as Zed's abuse is "in kind" to the unrelated-to-the-issue-complained-about abuse he has previously received, we (as in the HN community) have, in fact, been on the receiving end of that kind of abusive behavior from Zed.
Some people abusing you doesn't provide you license to abuse other people while complaining about how you hate abusive people.
I flagged this too for unnecessary drama, personal attacks, and off-target criticism - it is problematic because it encourages all the worst instincts of online forums - warring mobs taking binary positions, heated comments, and meta-debate over moderation.
It's likely to produce lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The best communities are those that self-reflect. They don't sweep the criticisms under the rug -- and I perceive your flagging as an attempt to do just that.