It doesn't matter who starts something, everyone who plays a role in continuing it has some responsibility for it, and some of your comments were needlessly abusive. Commenting like that doesn't make things better on HN, and indeed they make things much worse.
When you see comments on HN that seem harmful to the health of the community, the first thing to do is flag them and if they're particularly bad, you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can take a look. We can very easily address such issues quickly, well before they turn into hellish flamewars like this.
I agree. I was purposely very clear in my initial post in the hope that we could avoid any misunderstanding, but that clearly didn’t work out the way I’d have liked. While I tried to stick to discussing one specific thing I did let my replies get a bit loosey-goosey in response to what felt like somewhat confusing hostility.
I won’t be interacting with that user again, and I’ll email you guys next time I run into an interaction like that.
This has been, without a close second, the funniest thread I’ve ever seen on this website. The poster that started this whole thread cited the rules after telling me to fuck off