Their comment could have been replaced with “Elon bad” and it wouldn’t change the delta of how much you’ve learned from reading it. It was little more than a vindictive flame comment.

As for being condescending, I’ve often wondered how Dan manages not to sound condescending when explaining the philosophy behind why the rules are in place. It’s true that he’s articulate in a way that I probably can’t match.

But if you ask him, I’ll bet you money he’d agree that the Elon flame was a net negative.

I wanted to try something other than “downvote and move on,” since they’re new to the site. Maybe that was a mistake.

It's condescending and not helpful because you are not a moderator, you just have a feeling of how things should work in your opinion.

If it's a rule violation in your opinion, then report it and it will be handled. Otherwise you at best come across as brown nosing and at worst the exact same kind of person that gets cancelled on Twitter for confronting and calling the police on a family barbecue in the park.

I think the sentiment of your flagged comment is fair. the parent was a bit of an non-contributive emotional diatribe that could more or less be replaced with "Elon bad". but the tone of your reply completely misses the mark. beyond seeming a bit like the kid trying to impress the teacher by telling others how to behave, the explicit assumption that the commenter was new to HN was extremely tactless, and the way you appeared to speak for the community as a whole was quite grating

my equally-unsolicited friendly advice to you would be that if you do look at someone's comment history before replying, it's quite uncouth to comment on it, and you probably should avoid speaking for the community, especially if what you're saying isn't literally directly in the community guidelines

I do not really see how calling someone a petty pathetic vindictive man child spoiled whimsy attention seeker, is anywhere near a measured opinion.

That said, this is a prime example of downvote/flag moment and move on.