I’m also going to just say for the record: I think it is clear that I neither violated the spirit of the rule, nor the letter of it.
It’s also simply not reasonable to say I made a distinction without a difference.
We know that a lot of people engage with the comments on HN without fully reading the source material, and this is now expected behavior. This makes the guideline as written a good way to avoid a common and unproductive antipattern.
However there is a clear difference between not fully reading the source material and not reading the comments you are replying to.
If you want the rule to cover both cases, then you should update it to do so.
A rule like ‘don’t make inferences about other commenters knowledge or understanding of the post or the thread - but rather address this through commenting on the meaning of their statements’ would cover this and a host of other issues, but the one you have used simply does not.
Your suggestion - “This is addressed unthread” can be a dismissal (especially if inaccurate) that is significantly more offensive than “sounds like you aren’t reading along”.
“How can it be objectively user hostile, if someone such as csunbird loves it?”
Would fit this rubric.
In any case, something seems off about this particular moderator intervention.