I don't want an apology on behalf of the very angry minority, not even close.
You may not want one, but you deserve one.
It's sad to see that even without the visibility of the mob amplifying itself in public, you still get a private lynching of sorts... Perhaps the same people who sent those emails can come out of the woodwork now and apologise. That'd be big of them.
That particular guy was an anomaly. He claimed that his 'friend' sent me his CV and that I then called every single company on the CV trying to pick up jobs. I did try and reason with him and he refused to point out who this particular 'friend' was and it was simply his insistance that I was corrupt against my instance that I kept my word about not taking advantage of my situation.
Unfortunately, like most sites HN has its fair share of borderline-psychotic oddballs who like to send angry e-mails to people and attempt to upset them.
I've had a few private e-mails responding to innocuous comments of mine over the years threatening all sorts of stuff. I put it down to the "if you're out there enough, you'll keep encountering that 1% of crazies" rule and assume my reach must be getting better ;-)
More interestingly, I once had a slightly heated debate on HN - nothing serious - just different points of views - and in the end the person managed to hunt down my email address just to apologize in case there were any hard feelings (which there weren't). This community is one of a kind, even with your occasional borderline-psychotic oddballs :)
I actually tried Peroni beer today just because of this thread. I gotta say it's not bad at all. But if you're ever in LA, I'll match the beer offer :)
You may not want one, but you deserve one.
It's sad to see that even without the visibility of the mob amplifying itself in public, you still get a private lynching of sorts... Perhaps the same people who sent those emails can come out of the woodwork now and apologise. That'd be big of them.