I don't think the "Please stop spreading misinformation." boilerplate is necessarily always hostile and provocative. In situations where the comment is only ai

I don't think the "Please stop spreading misinformation." boilerplate is necessarily always hostile and provocative. In situations where the comment is only aimed at correcting a factual mistake, for example, it can be okay, if still bad style. It always feels as if it prematurely implies evil intention, which is a move that does not belong in any intellectually honest conversation, neither casual nor scientific. I don't think the boilerplate should be used in comments that then continue with highly questionable, very radical statements. Especially if heterodox opinions are stated as if they were well established positions. For example: "This is no different to instituting lockdowns before vaccines became available." The idea that conditional lockdowns are identical to non-conditional lockdowns from legal, medical or political perspective is not just wrong, but also unnecessarily radical. The radicalism just makes the wrongness trivial to spot. The position that actually justifies conditional lock-downs (like the new Austrian policy) is one where the discriminatory treatment is acknowledged and justified, not simply denied. ...which should not surprise anyone who somewhat followed the discourse on the issue. I know that's not as attractive as just denying the existence of differences between two obviously different policies.