I see tons of people use citation marks for non-literal quotes in all sorts of ways
That's why I said it's mostly about the paraphrasing and it makes sense to take it as such. Neither 'other people are doing it' (you didn't really provide an example of what 'it' is in this case) nor 'the other person started it' are all that important anyway. But if they were bad comments, hopefully you downvoted and/or flagged them.
adjust to a personal pet peeve.
It's certainly not my personal pet peeve. I've argued against it.
I mean, that's how the site works already. Your comment got downvoted, flagkilled and you even got a personal moderator scolding, pretty much the maximum penalty an HN comment can get.
In general, avoiding as many standard internet battletropes (calling strangers narcissists who need to get overthemselves, aggro paraphrase, 'good luck with that', etc) as one can manage makes for better comments and better writing (on a messageboard, a very low bar to trundle over as it is).
That's why I said it's mostly about the paraphrasing and it makes sense to take it as such. Neither 'other people are doing it' (you didn't really provide an example of what 'it' is in this case) nor 'the other person started it' are all that important anyway. But if they were bad comments, hopefully you downvoted and/or flagged them.
adjust to a personal pet peeve.
It's certainly not my personal pet peeve. I've argued against it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15892780
Good luck with that.
I mean, that's how the site works already. Your comment got downvoted, flagkilled and you even got a personal moderator scolding, pretty much the maximum penalty an HN comment can get.
In general, avoiding as many standard internet battletropes (calling strangers narcissists who need to get overthemselves, aggro paraphrase, 'good luck with that', etc) as one can manage makes for better comments and better writing (on a messageboard, a very low bar to trundle over as it is).