Unfortunately people tend to underestimate their own provocations by 10x or more. Even when we get full out flamewars the instigator inevitably says things like 'but I was only mildly teasing' or what have you. In any case, what matters is effects, not intent, and that's what we have to moderate by (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). The effects of snark, flamebait, and so on are predictable, so commenters are responsible for avoiding them.

By the way, this has been a problem in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657986 (Aug 2019), and we've had to ask you several times not to break HN's guidelines in other ways too. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and recalibrate how you're posting to this site?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38286445 (Nov 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619557 (April 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33885502 (Dec 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127589 (Aug 2017)