I disagree with this sentiment. Linus' answer not only describes the immediate bug, but also gives enough detail and context that other, similar potential bugs

I disagree with this sentiment. Linus' answer not only describes the immediate bug, but also gives enough detail and context that other, similar potential bugs related to the scheduler may be avoided after having read the entire post. Also I don't think Linus is being egregiously impolite in his post; he isn't calling the author of the post garbage. Calling the code garbage is not a personal affront, but an objective statement to dissuade others from being misled. If this was a truly idiotic / trivial mistake I doubt Linus would put much thought or time into such a long post. I also think that if you are going to write a blog post, you are implicitly supposing a place of authority and therefore opening yourself to criticisms. In other words, writing a blog post that is incorrect (in this case, very incorrect) is actively harmful as it misleads others, and it is important to call out wrong posts when necessary. I've posted dumb advice with a know-it-all voice before too (see [1] for an embarrassing HN comment) and I am not at all angry/annoyed that I was similarly called out. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20017832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20017832 (edit: wrong link)