I mean, tbh, these are rather vague guidelines. You could say my comments are "thoughtful and substantive." I made an observation that the corruption in the article had many responsible parties and people from all walks of life participating in it, more than what would normally happen in the states. The fact that so many people participated does say something about the culture in general.
As for "eschew flamebait"... how much flame did this post cause? There's definitely a bit a flame, but I would say overall a flamewar didn't happen. So basically you're wrong. You use your "experience" to justify the warning but I would say your experience is wrong for this case... most of the sub threads aren't things that I would classify as flame.
I get where you come from though. It's hard to see from a distance whether a comment will cause a forrest fire.
Maybe put out the forest fire if you see one starting, but don't ban the use of matches all together.