Comment by cassepipe

I admit to overreacting sorry about that.

> It looks superficially clever, but is actually just pedantry.

I'll just defend why is think this is not in fact pedantry but a genuine concern : The "great divide" is now such commonplace, especially in the US, with people living in their online and media environment bubbles that "gardens" like HN are more valuable than ever. The world is already tribal enough as it it. "friend" or "foe" encourages tribal behaviour instead of engaging with different viewpoints. Tribal behaviour is deeply ingrained in all of us and nothing to scoff at. The extension encourages glossing over diverging viewpoints, setting yourself up to dismiss quickly. I just don't think that's in the spirit of HN. There's already community moderation to prune comments who are failing HN guidelines.

You are indeed correct about the guidelines. This is the part I remembered wrongly:

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit.

However I don't think it would be against the spirit of the law to extend the guidelines with "Don't make comments about the general population of HN. Such vague generalizations bring nothing interesting to the table"