[nitrogen]

I'm glad you took the time to write this response. Part of the problem with this thread is that people defending Kiera Wilmot aren't just defending her, they're defending themselves. They did similar (or more extreme) things, and they know their lives would have been ruined by the kind of response demonstrated by school and government officials in her case. They know that society might lose decades of valuable contribution from a healthily curious girl, and think of what their lives would be like if their youthful indiscretions had destroyed their own careers.

People implicitly defending their own identities have a much harder time backing down or seeing the implicit defense of identity in the other side's arguments, so you have two sides escalating to ever more extreme examples until the discussion devolves into shouting and namecalling.

There were some deplorable comments that will no doubt be cited by others as examples of HN's terribleness (though you should note that you're the one who brought up anthrax). But there was also an inspiring rally around someone who looked like she could use some support. Sadly, not everyone who deserves this kind of attention gets it (like the Novato teenagers you mentioned in another comment).

In the end, your life will be perfectly fine without HN, HN will carry on without you, and eventually it'll either get better, or reach the point where everyone interested in rational discussion will leave. But if not HN, where? HN seems to have much less of a hivemind than, say, Groklaw. What other community is as consistently articulate (outside of stories about Apple ;-P), even if they're articulately vile and wrong?