As nitpicks go ( public misundersatnding based on word selection by summarizing party ), this one is valid.

Ah, you new 'round these parts? It's unfashionable to speak directly--we must fragment, hypothesize, add complexity and nuance rather than simply leave someone's slightly vague statement uncorrected. -_-

HN rewards "technical discussion" in controversial threads, even when it's not salient or intellectually gratifying. Touching on the political implications is enough to split opinion and guarantee your place towards the middle/bottom of the thread.

This doesn't seem to be the case here. Which comment is showing up top for you?

I noticed my most recent nitpick comment got a significant number of upvotes. I spent some time today wondering if HN needed a way to indicate something is a nitpick and cause the votes on it to carry less weight in the sorting. Because if the nitpick is valid I don't think downvotes are appropriate since people might end up seeing it and having misconceptions corrected, but it also shouldn't detract from discussions on the meat of the post.

Of course I'm probably the odd one out, wanting to apply that modifier to my own nitpick comments, so that idea probably wouldn't end up being very useful in general.

(There is also some irony in me commenting on your comment here where it's completely unrelated to the actual post...)

You'll find that in a community full of pragmatic pedants.