Earlier quoted context omitted.
That could certainly be. But why not use HN in the intended spirit? It would be better for everyone, you included.
>even when the other person is ignorant or wrong >It's not a valid reason to break HN's rules. >That could certainly be. >But there are many different ways to stick up for the truth Whoa. Dang, I have to say, I feel a little slighted. I'm neither ignorant , nor wrong , and I'm aghast that you would insinuate that. I've contributed faithfully to this site for a decade. The other commenter has -15 karma because, as you…
This is a way of pre-empting the objection "But the other person is wrong and I'm right", which otherwise is the most common reaction to getting moderated. Since the moderation issue is about how people treat each other rather than how right or wrong they are, it's helpful to take it off the table in this way. If you think about it, it's a way of raising the bar for behavior on HN and in that respect is a stronger moderation reaction, not a weaker one.
I am careful, when using such phrases, never to actually take a side on the issue of rightness or wrongness. Remember that in every argument, the other person considers that they are the one who is right; moderating like this is a way of temporarily standing beside them from that perspective and pointing out that nevertheless, they should not have broken the rules. (An exception might be if I happen to personally know the truth about the point under dispute. But I know nothing about DKIM; I barely remember what it is.)
If you skim through https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... you'll see that I use this approach all the time when trying to get people to follow the rules. It's true that I tried harder in this case than I usually do. That's for reasons which are out of scope of this thread, and had nothing to do with tolerating bad behavior (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25162543).