I understand where you're coming from, but I'm honestly not sure how much of the article -- or articles in general -- I could bring up without it potentially counting as an 'ideological tangent', as that seems like an awfully broad and ambiguous label. Just about everything is ideological to somebody.

I also don't see what about my comment exactly counts as flamebait. I wasn't overly abrasive, I didn't say anything particularly outrageous or extreme. It was a political sort of point, yes, but "how do we, as a society, help former criminals integrate back into society" is kind of inherently political, I think.

Your comment wasn't first-order flamebait, but it was a classic generic ideological tangent. Those two things are related, since generic ideological tangents mostly lead to flamewars. That's why they're included in that guideline.

In this case you picked a particularly weak point from the article, on a generic ideological issue, that was entirely tangential to the main topic (which is where all the specific information that could support non-generic discussion was), and posted a comment dismissing it, leading with a swipe ("I mean, yeah?"). That pretty much guarantees what we ended up with.

There's another guideline that's relevant here: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." There are two ways in which your comment arguably broke that rule. First, picking a weak and tangential point from the article to criticize is more marginal nitpicking than solid discussion. The "strongest plausible" rule applies at the article level as well.

But also: if I read the entire quote that you were objecting to, it's clear that that person's main point was that the private sector can't solve all the problems that come up for reintegrating former prisoners. In other words, the quote's point is exactly the same as yours. If you had adopted the strongest plausible interpretation, the "blaming Slack and co" provocation would have dropped out and there would have been nothing to complain about.

I hope it doesn't feel like I'm picking on you personally. These issues are common, which is why I post about them at length. The hope is to get the community to understand the patterns, so we can have more curious conversation and less bilious repetition.

Well, maybe it was from your perspective, as someone who obviously reads HN comments all the time. I was expecting maybe a handful of comments at most, and I sure as hell wasn't expecting people to suddenly start arguing about Brexit.

> The issue with your comment wasn't exactly that it was flamebait, but because it was a classic generic ideological tangent.

I take issue with this. It's true that what I was doing was going up a level of abstraction. But, like, that's an extremely common rhetorical thing to do, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Often there's a good point to be made there; obviously in this case I thought it was true of what I wrote, maybe you disagree, but I've seen your own comments do the same thing all the time to help explain a point, like about contrarianism.

It sounds like "generic ideological tangent" is just "going up a level of abstraction" in the case where it's more likely to start a flame war. But that's not always easily predictable, and even when it is, it essentially means you're shutting down points, not because the points themselves are bad, but because other commenters can't be trusted to restrain themselves from much more awful replies to that comment.

> you picked a particularly weak point from the article

Oh c'mon. Of course people are going to pick on the weak points, because within our minds the weak points are the bad points that we disagree with and want to say so. That people leap to speak when they think a point is dumb or wrong, more than when they think a point is good or okay, is entirely expected and normal and fine. When people hear something that sounds wrong to them, they feel a compulsion to speak out, to correct it, from their perspective. That's not a bad thing.

> that was entirely tangential to the main topic

Well, it didn't feel tangential to me. To me, the article is about how to help felons re-integrate into society, the quoted person was talking about how we need to support felons in other ways as well (which I agree with), and then, to borrow your language, took a swipe at the private sector for apparently not doing their part in those areas, blaming them essentially, which I felt was unfair and unrealistic. I really don't think "should the private sector do more here in other areas to support felons?" is tangential to the topic. To me it felt like one point among many.

> that person's main point was that the private sector can't solve all the problems

I disagree, I don't think that was her point at all. "the private sector has largely turned away from [these areas]" does not read like she's saying they can't, but that they don't, they won't, they've refused to.

edit: I'll try to be more careful in the future, but honestly, even earnestly trying, I'm not exactly sure what would make sense to change about my posting mindset. Try not to comment on points if they're too minor? Don't go up a level of abstraction to make points about more generic principles? These don't sound like good things to me.

edit2: I kind of see what you mean about the swipe. I can try to avoid that in the future, though I feel like it may be difficult without switching to a very dry/stiff posting style. "I mean, yeah?" is not a very abrasive or aggressive sort of comment. It's the written equivalent of a shrug. I'm aware that HN has high standards for civility, but I honestly did not expect such a sentence to breach that.