And I recommend you give people the benefit of the doubt, though honestly I have to say I frequently fail at that myself. For example, your comment could be perceived as somewhat condescending, but I force myself to categorize it differently. I also know that I can come across way more negative than I intend to, I apologize for that and I'm working on it.

For what it's worth, I do think my original comment was snarky and dismissive, but somewhat counterintuitively that's not usually what gets people downvoted and flagged on HN. People can and do get away with artful personal attacks on HN all the time, at least in my defense I can say I attacked an idea instead of a person.

It may well be the case that my insufferability amplified the reaction, but I posit the root cause was disagreement about the message, not its format.

> although it seems to have turned out okay in this case.

It turned out okay because a decent dialogue emerged from it, one of the very few in this entire thread. But it was sufficiently controversial to get enough downvotes in order for my comments to teeter around 0 points and also receive flags. There have been a few updates to HN's comment ranking and voting algorithms that will make me regret taking this stance for some time, which may or may not provide you with some comfort to know.

It's offtopic, but when you reach 500 karma (or thereabouts), you get the ability to downvote the comments you feel are a net-detriment to the discussion. Sometimes, when I express a particularly unpopular opinion I also get flagged. The result is what I call "the doghouse", it causes comments to sink to the bottom like stones for a few months, among other things. HN moderation has hidden mechanics and the results can be very frustrating. But in 99% of cases, when those special mechanics are not in effect, the system works pretty well.