The actual guideline is “there is a convention on HN of asking users not to use quotation marks to make it look like they're quoting someone when they're actual

The actual guideline is “there is a convention on HN of asking users not to use quotation marks to make it look like they're quoting someone when they're actually not.” That clearly didn’t happen here because the commenter indicated what you literally said with ‘>’ and then put their paraphrase underneath it in quotation marks. No-one would have mistaken it for a literal quote. If you think your position was misunderstood then that’s that’s the real issue, not punctuation usage. IMO it would be better addressed by engaging with the substance of the post (including the salient point that the Maher case is not comparable) rather finding some technical violation of HN common law to pick at. I’m sure there’s also a guideline against derailing substantive discussions into irrelevant picking over minor guidelines.