Normally I 100% agree and this is, to me, one of the most important things that separates comments that are constructive from ones that are unfocused and all over the map. A lot of my own comment history is me making that same criticism.
But in this case, I think they are identifying an implication of "not making generalities" which I find to be perfectly appropriate. It reminds me of the robolending scandal, and how companies involved tried to deflect systematic criticism by suggesting each instance of robolending needed to be reviewed on a case by case basis without drawing why systematic conclusions.
It's meant as a criticism of how "don't make generalizations" can be used to deflect important and appropriate criticism, and I don't think it's just a case of someone changing the subject randomly.
Such a point could be made directly and respectfully, and without the sneering sarcasm. Engaging with such content rather than rejecting that behavior out of hand rewards it and demonstrates both to the poster and to any onlookers that lowering the level of discussion is welcome here.
Asking people not to misread a comment is an exhortation to improve quality of discussion. Endorsing a misreading because you dislike the comment being misread does not improve quality of discussion. You're equivocating between (1) misinterpret and (2) "reject out of hand" in order to make that endorsement work.
You can object to style without having to signal to the community that misinterpreting comments is an accepted practice.
It is not a misread to point out that the comment was loaded with sarcasm and would have been better without it, neither is it one to point out that engaging with that content causes its proliferation.
It is a misread to equivocate between stylistic objections and a criticism that was not about stylistic objections and suggest that both were expressing the same idea.
Endorsing the misread as the cost of doing business in order to reject a comment over stylistic objections signals that misreading is to be embraced as a community value.
Which I didn't do? Nobody misread anything. The comment is objectively nasty and sarcastic, against the rules of the site, and I asked you to consider that substantive comments are best addressed to other substantive comments.
I get that you don't like sarcasm (disagree, but to each his own), but how is the comment that I replied to more "respectful"? They dismissed out of hand the entire intellectual exercise of the original post because it doesn't jibe with their ideal of perfectly informed employees making optimal contracts with their employers.
I found their tone quite sneering and flippant, and so I parodied it (pretty mildly, I might add, the implications are right there in the comment I replied to).
