I've seen this reply several times under OP so I assume it's either automated or a mod, I'm not familiar enough with the site.
If a mod, why is a post answer which is basically bait, allowed to stay up, but people are being asked to refrain from answering it?
The topic is clearly ideological. A post defends a dictatorship with poor arguments and accused, among many other attrocities, of stealing thousands of babies. But the answers to such a troll are being asked to stop.
I did my best to moderate all sides in this thread when I saw people breaking the site guidelines, regardless of what point they were making. If I neglected to post a scolding in reply to a comment that deserved it, that would be either because (a) I already replied to that commenter elsewhere in the thread; or (b) I just missed it.
Of course the topic has a lot of ideological overlap, but that makes it more important not to descend into flamewar. That's why the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? I think if you take in the intended spirit of the site, it should be clearer why we moderate it the way we do—and also that we're not taking any side in any of these flamewars.
Btw, the site guidelines also contain this: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." — that is the answer to the question in your second paragraph. This is our version of the old internet adage "Please don't feed the trolls."
