In case it helps at all: I post that type of reply (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) precisely when the commenter is a good contributor who we don't want to get dinged by HN's software. Usually it turns out that people weren't aware of the rule (as was the case here).

(I've marked the subthread offtopic and collapsed it now)