While I disagree that responding falsely was a better move than simply not responding at all, I agree with your point about hn quality lamentations.
As someone who came to hn after "the good ol' days", I would much prefer to see constant reminders of "That's not how we do things here" than "Man, things sure have gotten bad".
Entropy is the norm; everything degrades without constant force applied.
One thing I've learned here is that it's much better to encourage what you like than bitch about things sucking.
I don't like the posts that say "weird new tool that everyone but you has heard about has released a new version!" I tried criticizing those posts and got downvoted, probably legitimately.
But my #1 upvoted comment ever, by at least a factor of 3, was this one[1] where I praised a tmux posting that very clearly said what tmux was for someone unfamiliar with the concept.
So clearly I struck a nerve and other people feel the way I do, but I just had to find a positive way to encourage what I wanted.
As someone who came to hn after "the good ol' days", I would much prefer to see constant reminders of "That's not how we do things here" than "Man, things sure have gotten bad". Entropy is the norm; everything degrades without constant force applied.