(I was replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27798953, not to you - did you miss that? You might need to turn 'showdead' on in your profile to see the comment, since it's flagkilled now. But I should probably still respond to what you've said here because it is definitely not how HN is supposed to work.)

Sorry, but there's always a version of this argument to be made and people always make it to show that this time is different and their comment is justified. You can justify anything that way, and mostly what people use it to justify is just regular old internet flamewar, which is never very interesting. So I don't see any reason to change HN's rules; if anything, they become more important, not less, as the stakes get higher.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html