[dragonwriter]

> But firing comments from the hip derails discussion even worse

The proper response, then, is to downvote the derailing comment, not to respond with an attack. Downvotes are HNs tool for maintaining S/N ratio, attacks making ascribing what you presume caused the poster to post in a way you find less-than-worthy don't deal with any problem, they just exacerbate it and fill HN with toxic noise.

[dang]

You can also, if you see a particularly bad example sitting at the top of an active discussion, email us at [e-mail]. We moderate the threads to try to prevent shallow dismissals from sitting at the top, but we don't see everything.