> Presumably these are people who felt even harder done by when newspapers, magazines, and book publishers refused to give them full print runs too.

How is that respectful and thoughtful, how is it not snarky? Does this apply to people like Naomi Wu, and every other person who thinks payment processors and patron-like things should be neutral like banks are? No. The commenter didn't talk with all those people, if they even talked with one, they didn't do it on HN. Hence, made up.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says

Your interpretation apparently is "that person can't post thoughtfully and respectfully". Not, say, "that Venn diagramm is made up from whole cloth, and they're unhappy about the thread being full of comments seeming to defend others being censored without even owning that, and ended up being snarky in response to someone who was snarky about hundreds if not thousands of people in their comment". That doesn't excuse my snark, but it does call the even application of the guidelines into question.

And if you feel free to question my general ability to post thoughtfully and respectfully, that's not really better than me asking someone "if they even have a position". Yes, I can post thoughtfully and respectfully, or I wouldn't have been posting here since 2013. I wouldn't have taken a break for nearly 2 years when Trump was elected because I noticed I was getting to short-tempered, either. But that's also why I'm not going to grovel and promise "that I can post respectfully and thoughtfully". I think we have very different outlooks, maybe you don't consider it respectless to be thoughtless, cold or even cruel with plausible deniability, or in someone's absence. I consider it more respectful to contradict someone directly, and candidly.

Sorry to toufiqbarhamov for implying they might not have a position, that was uncalled for. But I still might have asked what their position is, if it's one of the two theories or a third one, just without snark. And I stand by the Venn diagramm being made up from whole cloth, I'd like to see someone seriously claim it's not. So, I guess this gains little to nothing.

So dang, you just have to do whatever you want to do. If you found this comment super problematic and the comment it was a response to thoughtful, and saw my comment because it was flagged, I bet you that if you look through my comments you wouldn't need to go far to find reasons to ban me. You have my blessing, not that you need it. It's not like my comments are very useful to many people here anyway. They're useful for me, because they happen to be what I actually think, but they get precious little replies as is anyway, and believe it or not, I don't actually enjoy arguing with people. I would rather upvote them, or upvote someone who refuted something I noticed. I certainly don't enjoy being as short as I can at first, and getting one-liner replies to that, then making my case thoroughly, and getting nothing. I still do it because I can always see if I can reuse material from my own comments, but being hellbanned would make not much practical difference in my case, and at this point, I can't even guess what kind of community you envision for HN, so just do your thing, and have a good new year.