Generally speaking, I agree with the article.  For some reason, there seems to be a widespread attitude of &quot;meanness&quot; on the internet (actually, perhaps that&#x27;s just people in general...)<p>I recall three years ago asking the question &quot;What is dependent typing?&quot; on Stack Overflow.  The first commenter replied &quot;Did you try google? wikipedia?&quot; to which I provided a sassy retort (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;9338709&#x2F;what-is-dependent-typing" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;9338709&#x2F;what-is-dependent...</a>).<p>Some people seem to become quickly exasperated with what they perceive as &quot;stupid&quot; questions (e.g. Linus Torvalds).  I don&#x27;t understand why; just ignore them.  On the other hand, I get exasperated with mean comments.  I frequently upvote people on Hacker News that I disagree with if they have worded their stance in a nice way, and I also frequently downvote people that I agree with if I find their comment particularly rude.<p>Some feel that rudeness is necessary in order to drive a point home (particularly in politics — lots of mudslinging), but I disagree.  It would be interesting to see if any research has been done on this subject: are blunt, mean comments <i>actually</i> effective in certain situations?