Which is why it's generally more appropriate to use the downvote & flag buttons rather than engaging in meta discussion. Which we're clearly not doing here ;)
> You claim that "it didn't foster discussion", but you are disproven in reality. Besides the distracting meta-discussion, the comment did foster discussion of that particular quote, which you can see in the thread below, with people arguing pro and against the very ideas expressed in the quote.
Hmm. Yes, that's true, but 1) we do have this distracting meta discussion here that wouldn't be here if the original post wasn't so content-free, and 2) I see something as a quote + simple explanation as the laziest, weakest way to attempt to foster discussion. Yes, that's just my opinion! And you're right in this case that some (good!) discussion did result from the original (IMO weak) post. But that doesn't mean that's anywhere near the best way to foster discussion, and I'd like to see the bar raised; this is a great community that I don't want to see degrade.
As a member of the HN community, consider where this leads: endless flamewars and meta-discussions on comments, instead of TFA.
Note also that I'm not against people speaking on what's "appropriate for HN" in general, just against particular uncalled for instances. If a comment is defamatory or off-topic etc, it's a fair game.
>Quoting a section of text and then "annotating" it with "Jesus..." is not discussion, and doesn't foster discussion, at least, no aside from the "yeah, no kidding" variety.
Quoting and exclamations are very much part of discussion. In fact, for quoting this should go without saying. From books to scientific papers and on to legendary literary or scholarly exchanges, you'll find extended use of quotations. It is an act of curation and highlighting. Same for the annotation "Jesus", that serves to give us a clear indication of what the commenter thought of the quotation (he doesn't approve of it).
You claim that "it didn't foster discussion", but you are disproven in reality. Besides the distracting meta-discussion, the comment did foster discussion of that particular quote, which you can see in the thread below, with people arguing pro and against the very ideas expressed in the quote.