Followup: why the downvote? This article has a bizarre and amateurish ending:

  "Despite Tadini's losses, his methods have continued to 
  influence combat into the present. Mining and 
  countermining, with all their attendant surveillance and 
  engineering, are still staples of warfare."

This is actually worse than a passage from a test -- it sounds like a student essay written in response. It's little better than:

  In conclusion, Tadini's mining is still influential today.

which is vague, abrupt and unsubstantiated -- the article makes no mention of mining in the current day. Am I the only one who finds this odd?

I notice you're new to HN. Welcome! https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

To understand what makes HN different from other sites, you may want to familiarize yourself with the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In particular, we try to write comments that are interesting to read. That rules out swipes and one-line dismissals: calling something amateurish, or complaining about downvotes.

HN has a lot to offer as a community, and we started out as a tight-knit group of refugees from sites like Reddit. This place has grown up a lot since then, but those fundamentals were the reason for HN's success.

Your second comment was better than your first -- a substantive dismissal is always preferable. And you can write comments like that if you really want to. I usually find it's more productive to focus on what's cool about a piece. There's usually something.

However if an article is mistaken, that's worth calling out. Some of the best HN comments are refutations. Though you'll want to be certain you're correct, or else you'll get called out yourself. :)

Thank you for the reply. Having lurked on HN for a while, I'm used to some negativity, or at least very critical, comments. So when most of the comments for this piece appeared positive something seemed off.

Anyway, I appreciate the environment on HN and the steps users like you take to preserve it.