[dang]

That belongs to a category of subrules or heuristics which are too numerous to list. If we tried to make the guidelines comprehensive that way, they would just get so long (or worse, so bureaucratic) that people wouldn't read them.

There's a limit to how much information one can get across that way, so we err on the side of explaining the spirit of the site and leave the 'case law' to specific moderation comments. One of these years I want to compile those into an extended FAQ or something, which could provide a home for the kind of documentation you're talking about.

If anyone is so weird as to want to read an entire 'essay' about this, I wrote one a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27307680. The relevant subthread starts at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27303886.

[ec109685]

Impressive how you’re able to find these quickly and quash. Follows the model of cleaning up graffiti quickly, which causes incidents to reduce over time.