Comment by latexr

> I'm not doing arcane rules-lawyering, I'm just saying people should avoid doing things the site guidelines quite specifically ask them not to do.

Which I agree with. And I’m just saying the rules aren’t absolute, can’t cover every situation, and could not predict the change of the world around them, thus occasional deviation from them is OK, especially when it serves the larger goal of protecting discourse on a website whose rules were written to protect it.

It’s the spirit of the law VS the letter of the law. Let’s say the rules ask you to not shove people but say nothing about peeing on others. If someone suddenly starts peeing on everyone without consent and refuses to stop, shoving them to get them away becomes an appropriate response despite being technically against the rules.

> I wasn't suggesting you did, I was suggesting the person I originally replied to might. (…) Does that mean I now repeat your parenthetical back to you?

By your own logic, I wasn’t suggesting you did it, I was asking for no one else to do it (also, it’d make no sense anyway, it’s not a straw man to incorrectly say someone is straw manning). It also means the person you originally replied to wasn’t accusing their parent comment, thus making your original comment invalid.