Isn't the more appropriate response to respond to the comment rather than downvote it? It doesn't seem to be a personal attack, or some other violation of the community guidelines.
I'm not a moderator, but IMO, it was absolutely a violation of community guidelines. It was incredibly snarky, flamebaity, and was obviously written to start a political battle.
The fact that it got flagged shows I'm definitely not alone in this thinking.
I suppose it did push some readers' buttons, thus ipso facto is flamebait whether or not that was the intent. I did not find it snarky (hyperbole is not snark), and it seemed to me its intent was to explain the situation as the author saw it. Of course, now that it's flagged I can't even re read it to check if my initial impression was off.
I wasn't one of your downvoters. (As you may know, you can't downvote a direct reply to your own comment.) But I think I know why your comment was downvoted.
greesil wrote: "now that it's flagged I can't even re read it"
I replied: "You can read flagged/dead comments by turning on 'showdead' on your profile/settings page."
You then replied: "False: you can't if you're browsing the site anonymously."
Now ask yourself, who was the "you" I addressed in my comment? Obviously greesil, and by extension other logged-in users like yourself.
I wasn't talking to, or talking about, anonymous readers. I never said they could read dead comments. They don't have profile pages! The discussion had nothing to do with anonymous readers until you brought them up out of the blue and incorrectly called my comment "false".
I thought comments downvoting or flagging was based on the content, not on grammar.
Anyway, I had to login with my phone to comment and read the dead comment, at work I go through a corporate firewall that strips all the unnecessary headers, so I can't stay logged in on HN and I can't read dead comments.
So maybe that you should have been an "I".
I'm not an anonymous reader, but during the day I'm forced to be one.
BTW anonymous readers are probably not an irrelevant number, they still are users and they still count.
Your answer was not entirely wrong, but it was incomplete, hence not true or false.
Don't take it personally.
It's like assuming that everybody speaks a perfect English, it's false.
Not even native English speakers are immune to errors.
I disagree, despite how much the hyperbolic posts I see on this site annoy me.
Assuming good faith, hyperbole is at worst intellectually lazy. It is, however, sometimes a useful rhetorical device.
Snark, on the other hand, is directly disrespectful of the content it is replying to. This signals that the snarker is not going to discuss the subject in good faith and disincentivizes further discussion.
I'm just giving you the straight dope on a few aspects of the organizational disaster that is google. The fact that you think it's incredible etc just shows what a basket case this company is.
But this article isn't evidence of Google having a liberal orthodoxy. It supports instead the claim that Google is a politically charged workplace, and that diversity advocates working at Google were facing harassment.
