it kept coming back to submit page? The submission ask if the thread filled flames of newbie startup entrepeneur was harmful to other newbie startup trying to learn the ropes and who only come here for seeking support, network and info? Is it good to accuse them of any other intention then that?
Just an FYI. I have a community website that is for the Parents, cadets, family and friends of a military service academy (nothing to do with my startup), I cannot imagine my members treating each other the way I have been treated in just one thread. Also, ON our site we encourage each other to posts, not discourage them so we too can have content and discussion worth while.
Just because this is a extremely active site, should not be a reason for people that have the power, to do everything in their power, to shut down a newbies good intentions!
Your community site, I'd guess, is largely about providing support for parents and family of cadets - that's an entirely different set of goals and requires an entirely different set of community values.
It would be a mistake to assume that all communities on the internet behave the same way.
I imagine that anti-war activists probably aren't very welcome on your military cadet site. If I appeared and talked about how the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is illegal and US troops keep shooting civilians and their allies, it wouldn't be very popular.
People might question my intentions, publicly, on a site that is set up for a specific purposes. They might read back over other comments I'd made that were more borderline and read them with a new context, where they were simply being ignored before.
Ultimately, you behaved inappropriately and don't seem to want to acknowledge that. You created this issue and have fanned the flames to make it worse.
Perhaps this is a really important lesson to learn for your business too: when you screw up, own the mistake. Don't try and weasel your way around it, admit it fully and completely and talk about how you can improve to ensure it doesn't happen again.
If you can't even do that on a discussion site, I wouldn't want to trust that you'd do it when you make a mistake in your business.
1. Downvotes give an outlet for expressing disapproval without incorporating a mechanism for ad hominem.
2. Flames tend to get downvoted.
3. Flamewars tend to get shut down quickly via moderation.