Read the guidelines! they explain how: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Let's not have a pronoun flamewar please. Everyone just resist.

The guidelines that say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says" and "Don't feed egregious comments by replying" combine to give good guidance here.

To answer your question about reporting, click on the time stamp of the post and then there should be a “flag” link. There might be a small karma threshold for it to be available.

There’s also the Contact link in the footer which has no karma requirement.

>What is the intent of using "xir" against the author's wishes if not to provoke an emotional response, then? The author is very clearly identified as "he".

While it could be that (I give it a chance of 10%), there's a more likely explanation: the parent just didn't read the post or skimmed through it, so they don't know whether the author "clearly identifies as "he".

They just respond to the headline "retweets are trash" with their opinions on retweets, and used "xir" to play it safe regarding whoever the author might be.

Many people (many have said so in HN discussions) don't read TFA, or don't read the whole FA, and hardly care enough to read bylines and who the author is, etc. They just come straight to the comments, and discuss the topic as a subject they have an opinion about, not based on what TFA says.

I don't find the word itself particularly upsetting.

I think the user is troll baiting because the author is explicitly identified as "he", not "xir".

As I already wrote: few care how the "author is explicitly identified", and many don't even read the original post (much less check out the author).

This has been established in meta-HN discussions, with many people saying they come straight to the comments.

Even more so, "Alexis" the author's name, even if one bothered to check it, can be both male and female, depending on the country.

I like how this thread started as a 'HN is no better than twitter' opinion which very quickly descended into an emotional argument about something utterly unrelated, somewhat proving the point. I happen to agree with one of you, and I would've taken up the argument in the past, but I'm starting to come around to the idea that it's so pointless trying to discuss these kinds of political/social topics online that we should just avoid them altogether.