I'm not sure I understand your point about SA. The fact that SA1 and SA2 share the same name is just a superficial coincidence, and given that SA2 is way more famous and controversial, changing the subject to him was an offtopic tangent. That seems obvious, no? You weren't the only person who did that, and I responded to the others the same way.

You can't go by upvotes alone - fluff and indignation routinely get lots of upvotes. This is a weakness of the upvoting system (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). A countervailing system is needed, and at HN that system is the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) plus moderation. So I'm afraid you're stuck with our judgment about what's substantive, if you want to keep commenting here.

That doesn't mean it's arbitrary, though. We have to stay within the bounds of what the community supports, or else we'd provoke a huge backlash and chaos on the site. Since there isn't a huge backlash and chaos on the site, moderation practice is within the bounds of what the community supports.

I'm certainly not intending to insult you and don't mean to insinuate anything; I'm just trying to point out where your comments have been breaking the site guidelines and conventions of the site, the same way I would with anyone. For better or worse, that's my job.