[tomhow]

Please don't ever comment like this on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This is only a site where anyone wants to participate because others make the effort to do better than this. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[gspr]

I agree, and I apologize. My emotions overflowed.

That being said – and with no reduction in my apology – I'm very glad to see that the comment my anger was directed at (a wild political statement without anything backing it up or anything contributing to further discussion) was also reprimanded. This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies, and should be called out (calling the author a moron is, of course, not the best way of doing that).

[tomhow]

Thanks for the contrition.

We hadn't reprimanded that user as yet, not because we regard it as a good comment (we certainly don't), but because we hadn't gotten to it. That's almost always the reason why we may reprimand one comment but not another bad one in a subthread. We're often not reading through subthreads in order of the discussion; we have different views of comments we look at to help us find the worst ones. Often, we get to other comments later, or if not, users who comment like that repeatedly will be reprimanded at another time, and eventually banned if they keep it up.

> This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies

I'd appeal to you to be less alarmist about comments posted on a niche tech-focused text-only discussion board. People can have strongly opposing opinions and even unhealthy ways of expressing political positions without necesssarily being "a major threat to free societies".

[calvinmorrison]

I thought it was a good comment. Concise and clear on the realpolitik trade-off without too much directly. Thanks