[dang]

When someone is routinely dropping lit matches in a dry forest, "he only started one wildfire" is obviously no defense.

Anyone who sincerely wanted to follow the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html would be behaving completely differently. Sincere misunderstandings are generally quite easy to clear up. If someone doesn't sincerely want to follow the site guidelines, they shouldn't be posting here. We're trying for a specific kind of community.

Even the worst case is easy to fix. If someone doesn't want to be banned, they're always welcome to email [e-mail] and give us reason to believe that they'll follow the rules in the future.

[jk700]

No one can sincerely follow those rules, because they are too subjective. The only reason people tolerate them is because they are not enforced. But when you do enforce something from them, it's always unjust and unfair, like in this case.

> When someone is routinely dropping lit matches in a dry forest, "he only started one wildfire" is obviously no defense.

He has lots and lots of comments of which only a couple that you didn't like. Absolutely nothing like "routinely dropping lit matches".

[dang]

The vast majority of commenters have no problem following the rules. It's not as if it's hard to avoid getting banned here.