The guidelines don&#x27;t refer to civility beyond &quot;Be Civil. Don&#x27;t say things you wouldn&#x27;t say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.&quot;<p>I already said I would say these things to his face, so we&#x27;re left with &quot;gratuitous negativity&quot;. Gratuitous means &quot;without apparent reason, cause, or justification&quot;. There&#x27;s enough tangible evidence in the article and others related to the topic, namely from the creator of the World Wide Web, to suggest that my negativity is with reason, cause, and justification. Perhaps you disagree with that.<p>This seems like someone telling me to read guidelines for a second time and then chastising me when it&#x27;s pointed out that the guidelines don&#x27;t provide enough explicit justification for his or her accusations and statements. Either you&#x27;re intentionally wasting my time or unintentionally wasting it as a result of presuming ignorance or failure to read. Again, this borders on a veiled, passive-aggressive personal attack, which you seem to be fine with.<p>If this is about being &quot;cartoonishly simplistic&quot;, that&#x27;s fine. I can censor my comments if that makes HN happy. In return for my willingness to censor myself, I request that HN raise the quality of its guidelines up from what many might consider cartoonishly simplistic to a level that is more robust and explicit. It&#x27;s not a matter of making them exhaustive. It&#x27;s a matter of them currently being ridiculously vague and thin. Some evidence for such a claim is in this thread of comments.