Should the HN rules be amended to discourage self-authored submissions? They seem to circumvent the natural filter that comes with peer-nomination, and suggests they were written with promotion in mind.
I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions, nor the way in which he defended some of them here, but it's pretty clear this whole comment section went to hell pretty early, and I don't think he deserves most the blame for that. I don't think most the Rust contributors or well known advocates do either. There was a huge amount of drive-by commenting where people seemed to sense the way the wind was blowing and thought it would be a good idea to pile on. That didn't help anyone.