I frankly can't see how this is inciting a flamewar. Tesla has a pretty good record of being terrible at manufacturing. I've seen innumerable comments on this site where people make similar "what makes you think that..." comments that are inciting argument. I don't see why mine is special.
Furthermore, in the linked comment, the person I was replying to did, in fact, completely miss the point of my comment and make an entirely non sequitur resposne. Will they be getting warned too?
Tesla is a divisive topic with passionate feelings on both sides, and a swipe like "they [can't] build cars in the first place" is tossing a Molotov cocktail into the thread. Would you mind taking the spirit of the site more to heart? We'd appreciate it greatly. Note this, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Re the other person: I'd don't know which specific comment you're referring to, but generally it's not against the site guidelines to miss someone's point, or to be wrong, or to make a non sequitur. Such rules would be impossible to impose and would wipe out half the discussion anyhow (I'm being generous with "half").
If they broke the guidelines then we probably should have moderated it too, but that runs up against a different issue—we can't see everything that gets posted here, or even come close. We often don't read the threads in linear (depth-first?) order either, so a comment that appears adjacent to a normal reader might escape our attention.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Furthermore, in the linked comment, the person I was replying to did, in fact, completely miss the point of my comment and make an entirely non sequitur resposne. Will they be getting warned too?