This should not be the top comment. It should be somewhere near the bottom of this page in light gray. It has nothing to do with the article and is completely off-topic. We should not pussy-foot around worrying about whether someone may be reminded of something that was traumatic in their lives because you mentioned a word.
HN has determined that this is the most insightful thing you need to know about the article: That the guy used the word rape.
Clearly, since it IS the top comment, HN as a whole disagrees with you.
I believe that discussion about appropriate language and communication styles is very applicable to HN. We're trying to be a better, more insightful discussion board with higher quality than other sites. Better writing is one way to do that, so it seem like a perfect discussion point.
Nope. Some portion of HN disagrees with me, sure. There are also people who use "this." and who make pun threads. Just because there's some people doing it that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, that it's right for HN, that it adds to the discussion, or that I'm wrong for not liking it.
Discussion about appropriate language and communication styles is indeed applicable to HN. And when an article about that gets up-voted we're all free to discuss our feelings on the topic.
Frankly, this article is the usual kind of frothy pro-startup blog post that is seen on an extremely regular basis here on hacker news. It's good for drawing conversation about how HN users feel about startups and that is about it. The feedback provided by the parent to the author of the post - and to the community as a whole - might very well be the most valuable thing posted here.
HN has determined that this is the most insightful thing you need to know about the article: That the guy used the word rape.