I honestly don't know how to do it. But I will say that on HN at least, there seems to be a moderation team interested in finding that balance. The only commen

I honestly don't know how to do it. But I will say that on HN at least, there seems to be a moderation team interested in finding that balance. The only comments I've seen that get killed are so far off the rails or so hateful as to be completely unproductive. From what I've seen online, the malevolent ones just seem to want to resort to personal attacks, or make terrible arguments full of basic logic flaws. I get what you're saying, but I would say that the onus is on the individual arguing to prove they are not malicious. If I type something that can be construed as 'off-topic' or malicious, I always either preface it with an explanation to the word choice (i.e. don't read tone in text, because this is said with a flat emote). Otherwise, I expect my comment to get flagged and killed. Like this one. This has nothing to do with the original story, so it may get killed. And that's something that I understand and am okay with.