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As of this time @HlynkaCG has been permabanned. I'm posting this message at the top of the thread, because its not really for Hlynka, its for the community to know. There were a few different posts I could have chosen in the modqueue, and many of them were too buried to be visible. The mod team has given him repeated warnings and bans. And I personally reached out to him last ban to warn him that a permaban was likely coming if this behavior continued.
I mostly do not feel this is a good thing, but it is a necessary thing. Hlynka had quite a few quality contributions, and I don't think I was alone in appreciating his often unique (for themotte) perspective. But he repeatedly did it in a way that just wasn't acceptable for the rules around here.
I would like people to have a few takeaways:
Please keep any discussion civil.
Although I reported several of his posts recently, this is very unfortunate and it's not the outcome that I would have preferred.
There were many obnoxious posts in Hlynka's extensive oeuvre, but most of them stopped short of actually breaking the rules. What really crossed the line for me recently were posts like this in the recent thread on HBD and identitarianism where he accused other posters of lying about their own positions without providing any supporting evidence.
To be clear, I think that people failing to appreciate the implications of their own position, or people failing to introspect on what their true position actually is in the first place, is a real phenomenon. People consciously lying about their own position is definitely a real phenomenon. I think all of those accusations should be fair game for discussion on TheMotte. But if you're going to levy those accusations, you should be prepared to support them with substantial argumentation. Hlynka was content throughout that entire thread to simply repeat his talking points without substantively engaging with the (very lengthy and thorough) rebuttals that other posters were offering. I had hoped that some mod warnings might cajole him into actually responding to other people's arguments.
Regardless, I would have preferred to deal with the issue through informal social consequences, like what @somedude was cooking up, rather than an actual permaban.
He brought a very unique flavor to TheMotte that can't easily be replaced, and I would hope that there's still a way for him to return someday.
That thread has Hlynka violating most of these guidelines:
No, somedude was likely to get a ban for this behavior, because its harassment. It was never reported and I only saw it yesterday after trying to extensively read Hlynka's recent posts.
I would disagree that it's harassment. Hlynka engaged in bad faith argumentation on the regular, and documenting it and bringing it up is not necessarily bad.
I've noticed him weaseling out of his own words, refusing to acknowledge clear evidence disproving his point, and in general engaging in convenient forgetfulness about the dozen times his claims were substantially rebutted.
Now, if this was posted everytime he asked for advice in the Wellness Thread on how to minimize the risk of lead poisoning from carrying his baby in a MOLLE rig, that would be harassment, but I strong agree with @somedude that if Hlynka were to engage in his usual antics, dropping by to point it out when relevant is a valuable public service.
Straight talk - is this grounds for banning now? ...because you're going to have a lot more work to do. Do you just need people to document it?
That is, unfortunately not grounds for banning, or it wasn't the grounds for banning in this particular instance.
But as always, the wildcard rules allow mods to act on repeated bad faith behavior, even if no given instance violates bright lines. It's just not a rule lightly applied.
If documented, it'll certainly be taken into consideration, though for the sake of civility we'd prefer you DM us, or even just use the report system instead of airing grievances in public.
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