<i>Asking HN users to be civil defends nothing except civility.</i><p>This would only be true if that request were applied equally whenever HN users were uncivil.  As it stands, it does generally come off as defending specific users.<p><i>...it&#x27;s orthogonal to one&#x27;s actual views.</i><p>Believing this is going to made you a worse moderator -- this is &quot;fair and balanced&quot;-style thinking.  There are many perspectives whose projection onto comment reflectivity are anything but zero.