[lucideer]

Responding to your edit on respectful commenting, I can't see any disrespectful comments in this thread (and generally find discourse on HN better than other places). Have some been deleted?

The top-level comments are mostly positive, with one or two constructively critical ones. There are one or two sub-comments with strongly worded criticism of Wikipedia's markup (the code holding the text), but none that mention people or are in any way ad hominem.

[jotux]

I'm a little confused as well. I skimmed through the comments a second time to see if I missed something but none of the negative comments look especially disrespectful or hateful. Mostly just people complaining that they don't like pop-ups or find the feature useful.

That said, I intentionally try to read text online in the most charitable voice possible, so maybe my perception is very different from others.

[le-mark]

Charity in discourse, particularly online, is good policy for everyone[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[publicfig]

I am not sure whether or not some have been deleted. When I made the edit earlier I noticed quite a few (some top level, but many secondary). I also usually find discourse on HN really a step above so many other sites I frequent! That's why it's been so disappointing to notice a rise in that kind of behavior for me lately (at least based off of my perception, of course).