That's an impossible thing to do right, you let it it it might turn ugly, you take it down you get this. Dang made the right call here, I've been in that position several times with camarades/ww.com and it is extremely un-nerving. The problem is that since the authorities were the apparent main cause of the problem here there would likely not be much positive effect from alerting them (something I did do in the cases where it might have made a difference and in at least one of those it did).
Police are one of the more blunt instruments in the toolbox. What possibly would have helped if someone close to Ian spotted this and would have done something about it but one can easily imagine that those people all follow Ians twitter feed and would already be better informed than any of us.
Yes, some friend/acquaintance could have paid him a visit. How big do you think the chances are that HN would be the channel that would alert a friend or acquaintance of Ian that would not already be aware of this through his twitter feed?
> But dang's comfort is more important, isn't it?
No, it obviously isn't but he made the right call in shutting down that thread and it looks to me as if you're trying to blame Dan for the death of Ian, which is utterly reprehensible. As I wrote above there is no way to do this right but with hindsight you too would have known what to do.
Fucking backseat drivers. I've been thinking really hard lately about why I feel that HN is no longer the nice place it used to be and it is comments like these that ram that home in a way that not much else ever could.
I think that startups becoming trendy made HN trendy, and trendy anything is bad. I've been here for a long time too (I ditch my accounts) and it really does seem there's been a gradual increase of nasty children and a corresponding departure of nice adults. Whenever I go away and come back it seems worse. The worsening also seems to be marked by big events like the Reddit fiasco, that women-in-tech stuff, Steve Jobs dying, Snowden, etc. I think when pg left that was it. I just want to have conversations with intelligent people but that doesn't seem to be the point anymore.
Police are one of the more blunt instruments in the toolbox. What possibly would have helped if someone close to Ian spotted this and would have done something about it but one can easily imagine that those people all follow Ians twitter feed and would already be better informed than any of us.
Secondguessing is easy.