Oh.. I just noticed this. I'm not sure why you are complaining about my comment but not the one I was replying to! At least I think you were talking to me. I'm not sure what in what I said was personal attack. At least, it seems you were implying something I said was a personal attack. I strongly criticized his view, words, assumptions, decisions. I'm kind of amazed to be threatened with banning about that. [reviews guidelines] Ah maybe "please reply to the argument instead of calling names" - I guess you mean "That's the most condescending, deluded thing I've heard in years." That seems to me a fact. From memory, I don't think there was an argument, just a string of false assumptions presented as fact. (Can't read his comment now) Or maybe it's a "shallow dismissal"? Not sure. What particularly about my comment deserved being threatened with banning?

I have noticed that the worse the comment, the harder it is to reply to decently/politely/etc; maybe it was impossible for me to reply to this one, or say what I thought without arguably breaking the guidelines, so OK, point taken, better not to reply in such cases. "Someone is wrong on the internet!" is real. I really did try to stay on-point, not hard enough apparently. I mean, I really do think it was the most condescending, deluded thing I'd read in years, definitely while on here. (I guess you've read much worse!) Again, not sure if that's the part you're objecting to. Apologies if you've read 10,000 replies just like this one. Kind of surprised (and depressed) I'm the problem here though.

ps I only saw your comment by chance, it's pages back in my comment history. Is there a way of getting alerts for replies on here?

I don't think I saw the parent comment; it's about as bad as yours was, though yours might have been a notch worse, since that one was attacking in the third person while you did it in the second.

The main thing to realize is that even if another comment is bad/uncivil, you still need to refrain from replying in kind. Believe me, I understand how hard that is! But our community depends on it.

Sometimes I think that HN threads are a big experiment in all of us learning how not to get triggered. If you give better than you "get" (by reading someone's comment), you'll be on the right track.

Ok thanks.