Did you really intend to call her "rackless Ruth" or was the slur an accidental misspelling of reckless? Because pointless and crude name-calling like that really detracts from any valid points you might have brought up.
You should also consider which areas of the world use "rack" as a slang for "breasts". (I'm not disagreeing with you - as a native English speaker I didn't know that rackless and reckless were synonyms).
It didn't detract anything for me. I'm able to read, comprehend, and digest any wisdom even if it's written with language which I wouldn't use myself. I think it's a really useful skill because you'll find most people do use different language to you.
My problem with the comment was not the dirty words (I love me some George Carlin and Louis Black), but the act of name-calling. The very first sentence of the hacker news guidelines for comments is "Be civil" [1].
That kind of "name calling" is pretty common in many areas. Watch some debates in British parliament, for example. Do you really think the Chief Financial Officer of one of the biggest companies in the world is unable to handle it? All you will do if you pursue this sterilisation of language is drive away the really intelligent, if idiosyncratic, people and help build an echo chamber.
I sincerely doubt that the Chief Financial Officer of one of the biggest companies in the world has time to read random comments on HN, so whether they 'can handle it' is moot. There is certainly a place for cursing and maybe even name-calling (though I'm surprised you'd bring up the British parliament as an example worthy of imitation) but Hacker News is not it, cf. why I quoted its guidelines. Indeed, sometimes cursing is the only way to properly convey a meaning. But this was not such a case - the slur was entirely drive-by and only served to distract from the rest of the comment (whose merit I cannot comment on since I had never heard of the person being commented on before today). So my intention is not to sterilize language or build an echo chamber, but to hopefully make one of these 'intelligent, if idiosyncratic' people aware that their way of communicating was preventing their message from reaching a wider audience.
The only one detracting from anything is you. The rest of us read the comment just fine. I'm american myself and know the "rack" slang but the meaning you suggested didn't occur to me until you pointed it out. I assumed the name had something to do with where this person (I don't know who he's talking about) used to work or some infamous project that went badly or something. Understanding the name didn't seem critical to the comment so I didn't spend time trying to analyze it.
No, not all of us. I didn't read the comment just fine either. I assumed a person who uses irrelevant misogynist slurs may have a personal grudge against the person he's insulting, so I'm not going to take anything he says about her very seriously.
Wait, misogynistic? You think "rackless" was a comment about her body? If it was that would be strange and innapropriate. I didn't read it that way and it didn't occur to me before this comment. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't meant to be that because it would be so unexpected.
If this wasn't OP's intention, I deeply apologize. That was my understanding and I think it was m12k's too. I'm used to seeing civil discussion here and that's what made me dismissive of the original comment.
> If it was that would be strange and innapropriate
Yes, that was my thought too, hence why I asked them if that was indeed what they meant by it. An archaic/dialectic spelling of reckless is strange too though, so I'm not really sure which is more likely. Just out of curiosity - if it only just now occurred to you that 'rackless' could refer to her body, then what did you think I was calling the comment out for?
I thought you were one of those overly sensitive types that got offended easily. You never know these days.
It's funny because it says a lot about some people who immediately thought it was a comment about breasts rather than either a typo, alternatively spelling or rack referring to data centre technology (on a technology site).
Has the OP confirmed that this is what the phrase meant? Because otherwise you're projecting meaning on something that may not have been intended (again, I have the back ground to recognize this kind of slur but I didn't see it in the original comment until it was pointed out). Why would you do that?
