It's also quoted, which seems okay to me.

I was referencing vayarajesh's comment, not hnnewguy's.

> It goes against HN's general discussion style

What? The use of terminology specific to social media?

1 - HN is social media.

2 - 'OP' is a term as associated with social media of a certain nature as the use of '#'

To be fair, hash-tags are used to categorize and group content on social media. HN does not implement this functionality. Essentially, the '#' serves no purpose on HN. Therefore, it is easy to see why people get bothered by it.

It was in quotes. It was clearly meant to characterise a certain type of commenter, rather than serve a categorical function.

Are you serious? Look at vayarajesh's original comment.

It 'clearly' states this: It makes me fall in love with Apple more. #Respect

No quotes. He/She was using it seriously.

Actually, it was first used without any support from twitter, then transformed into a tag-like functionality

Same with retweets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag#Origin_and_Use

OP is a term that's been used thousands of times in discussions posted on HN, the same can't be said of hashtags.

#998moretogo