This is going to sound harsh, but I mean it in the most sincere way possible and I hope you'll take it with that in mind. This community's standards are old an

This is going to sound harsh, but I mean it in the most sincere way possible and I hope you'll take it with that in mind. This community's standards are old and evolving and contested. There was no vote or debate on the guidelines you cited. They are just the same boilerplate you'd expect from any watered down open community. If you believe the members should have a say in the standards of the community then you should object to the diktat of these guidelines as much as I do. I've been here in various guises for well over a decade and I can tell you the standards have changed from something that was closer to Reddit or Digg for programmers into something that is trying to be as corporate and anodyne and bloodless as possible. The worst part is it isn't even the official mods doing it, it's the school marms in the comments. So, for you to come in and suggest that I'm out of order with my style of comment only suggests to me you are some arriviste with no sense of the cultural history of the place. The changes around here already look like a form of digital colonialism and then here you come acting as some kind of warrant chief disciplining the discourse. You change the culture and then tell the natives they aren't a 'culture fit'? That's pretty offensive. Anyway, it's not your particular fault exclusively but, without cultural memory, someone arguing forcefully or rhetorically on HN may seem like a dangerous new precedent when it's really just an obsolete local tradition that some of us quixotically try to protect. I don't know if you've noticed but there is a deficit of diverse political opinions around here. I'm old enough to remember when that wasn't the case. Allowing wannabe mods to enforce the new rules is a form of giving up on the fight over the culture of the place. Civility is not a universal standard. Go to any subculture and query the standards of civility and I bet you'll get some surprising answers. No, civility is the rule of the people who get to decide what's acceptable. This is contested space. I find comments like the parent's to be quite offensive and can give deep reasons for my opinion. In short, I found it uncivil. You may not like my style of participation, but at least understand why. I post my comments not to fight or offend but for the silent lurkers to see other possibilities and to be of good cheer in the knowledge that they are not alone in their sense of alienation from official tech culture.