[dang]

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and we have to ban accounts that do it repeatedly.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

[nlowell]

Sorry if I made it worse, I really felt like people's opinions were being treated uncharitably, and I was trying to right it.

[dang]

I definitely appreciate the wish to treat people charitably!

In terms of the site guidelines, "You're missing the point" is kind of a swipe and so should probably be dropped; "willfully" should definitely have been dropped because it's making a claim about negative intent that one can't actually know and such claims always land as an attack on the other person; and the last sentence was snarky and should have been dropped.

If one makes a habit of editing such things out of one's comments, one's substantive point will come to the fore more clearly, which benefits everyone. But it's not always easy in the moment!