As I mentioned there, it may be helpful to explicitly differatiate negativity vs. gratuitous negativity in that case. (Most examples of gratuitous negativity I've seen are low effort "this site sucks" comments, which are downvoted for reasons unrelated to negativity, and ad hominem attacks are already covered in the guidelines.)
I was struggling to define exactly what is meant by "gratuitous negativity", so thank you for giving what I think is a perfect example. It'd be great if you could answer the following questions about your comment to I think really get to the heart of the matter:
What were you trying to accomplish with your comment?
In what way does your comment move the conversation forward?
What are possible useful responses to your comment?
Interesting that you perceive this as "gratuitous negativity" as that was not my intention. answers to your questions:
1) pointing out that you shouldn't always believe those in positions of power, especially when they are attempting to control the narrative. you may not know this, but dang works for HN and his job is literally to censor comments and articles to ensure they follow the guidelines.
2) by reminding everyone who reads it that they should think critically, not only about the words being said, but also the context in which they are said and who is saying the words.
3) there probably aren't many as it isnt meant to be responded to, so much as to be a reminder to consider who is speaking, and to take all things with a grain of salt. although your response certainly engendered me to reply. but just because it is difficult to respond doesn't mean it isn't a useful contribution.
I have two choices in how to take this most recent reply. I can be the cynic and "think critically" and think you're just trying to come up with justifications for your snide remark after the fact. OR I can be charitable and believe that you're being honest, and really were trying to not be negative/overly cynical and instead acting as a reminder.
What you'll notice is that in your original comment you were not charitable to dang. He made a very clear statement that this change was not a reply to a specific comment. And your reply to that is effectively "you're not trustworthy". You are reinforcing this last point in your most recent reply by reiterating that dang's "job is to censor comments ...". Inferring that someone is untrustworthy is the opposite of being charitable, and falls squarely into "negative" territory.
You may feel that "calling someone out" and thus reminding people to "think critically" justifies the negativity of calling someone untrustworthy, but it doesn't. If you can't demonstrate how dang has shown himself to be untrustworthy, then all you're doing is slinging mud. If you know of an incident where he's been untrustworthy, then the constructive thing would be to say "Unfortunately I don't really believe you dang because you've proven yourself to be untrustworthy [here, here and here]."
And if your base reason for adding the comment is to remind people to "think critically" how patronizing is that to everyone that reads that? Why are you making the assumption that we're not thinking critically? Why do you feel it's your role to make sure that us readers are thinking critically?
Do you see the inherent arrogance in your comment, and thus how that adds to its negativity?
I think a corollary to the "don't be gratuitously negative" guideline, is "don't write as if you know better than everybody else"
I didn't realize it before, but this new guideline is probably targeting people exactly like myself. likely why I only have 40 some karma after however many years I've been on here.
so I guess I'll go back to lurking, since I'm not a member of the portion of the population that knows how to comment properly. does this make me bitter? yeah. but I'm human and I'm allowed to have emotions, no matter how irrational. is it for the "greater good" of the HN community? apparently everyone seems to think so.
You don't have to go back to lurking if you don't want to. What we're asking for can very much be learned. Like a lot of people here, I started out as a caustic commenter. I thought that was a good thing to do, for a bunch of reasons, and it took me a long time to realize that it was a net negative.
There's a lot of learning behind these guidelines and some of us learned it the hard way. You don't have to. Your fellow community members will give you amazingly thoughtful and practical feedback if you show any sign of wanting sincerely to improve.
As I mentioned there, it may be helpful to explicitly differatiate negativity vs. gratuitous negativity in that case. (Most examples of gratuitous negativity I've seen are low effort "this site sucks" comments, which are downvoted for reasons unrelated to negativity, and ad hominem attacks are already covered in the guidelines.)