I think it was fine to say the guy's comment was "dripping with snark" (a specific criticism), but not that it was "shitty," and not that he was "telling the rest of us what to do."
I would call those bits "mean" because the amount of insult they add is disproportionate to the amount of content they have. In other words, it would have been worthwile (IMHO) to find a better way to say the same thing.
Now, the whole point is that who am I to say what's mean? And I agree, hence the proposal I made to allow people to "vote" on what's mean, and have a threshhold. I mean hell, different communities find different things to be unacceptable "mean," and that's fine.
"Mean" for a girl scout meeting and "mean" for the LKML are pretty different; I think HN should probably be somewhere in between.
And the point is, if HN becomes like the LKML, we're gonna enjoy it a lot less; that's why we want to limit meanness, not because we're big softies.
I think it was fine to say the guy's comment was "dripping with snark" (a specific criticism), but not that it was "shitty," and not that he was "telling the rest of us what to do."
I would call those bits "mean" because the amount of insult they add is disproportionate to the amount of content they have. In other words, it would have been worthwile (IMHO) to find a better way to say the same thing.
Now, the whole point is that who am I to say what's mean? And I agree, hence the proposal I made to allow people to "vote" on what's mean, and have a threshhold. I mean hell, different communities find different things to be unacceptable "mean," and that's fine.
"Mean" for a girl scout meeting and "mean" for the LKML are pretty different; I think HN should probably be somewhere in between.
And the point is, if HN becomes like the LKML, we're gonna enjoy it a lot less; that's why we want to limit meanness, not because we're big softies.