I feel moderators wrongly inferred my intent! I want to reply

Question

I have provided an answer to Selecting a battery for a DIY project that I feel has been inappropriately deleted. My point? The motivation for deletion was that I allegedly "recommended" another board than the OP's, which BTW he didn't even specify. I didn't consider that a problem though.

What I don't understand and am shocked to see is that while nothing in my post obviously looks like a recommendation, not even remotely, negative comments do insist that was my intent. What?

My goal was to illustrate how a board manufacturer I know of dealt with battery powering and charging with one model, randomly chosen among a large catalogue of single-board-computers. It seems to me like personal interpretation of what "recommend" means, right? I am the only one to know whether my intent was or not a recommendation and I do state I did not recommend anything rather than hint to the OP (and in regard of the lack of information on his part) how he could solve his problem.

I am stunned by how prompt some have deduced I was "recommending" anything! When I recommend something I carefully word my sentences and I can clearly state my answer is not how I choose my words for a recommendation of any kind.

You know, when someone says "look how they're doing with board A, maybe it'll give you a hint", does it really look like a recommendation on using board A? Are hints forbidden on this site whenever question are vague enough and it doesn't really matter if they are? Is my hint not constructive enough that it has to be deleted?

Of course, if the OP decided to change his mind and use another board, it is all up to him and I strongly deny that was my intent. I intentionally left my answer open enough to the OP creativity and let him decide what to do eventually. The moderator and commenter apparently didn't get it that way.

As there were no accurate information from the OP about the board he was planning to use, my suggestion was to take a look at how Olimex did, while providing a particular circuitry to power from and charge batteries using standard (or specially crafted, if you like) on-board components. That to me was enough to give the OP a few hints about how it can be done. How can that possibly be viewed as "recommended a different board" ? I don't get it, really.

But what topped it all is the negative amount of criticism I received while trying to just hint at possible directions, while this looked like most appropriate to me given the lack of information from the OP -- what precise board he was about to use, did he actually have it, too? Yes, one of the best ways to address a problem in the engineering discipline sometimes involves changing one's mind, especially during the conception phase, which in this case might have ended in opting for another board. But that's only up to the OP, not me, I know that and this was definitely not my intent. My hint looked indeed appropriate since the OP seemed to investigate some direction (I am quoting:)

(for fun, I know it doesn't make economical sense ;) )

The tone of the question did not appeal for life-critical answers and industry-critical methodology. Instead an open illustration seemed appropriate to me.

I'm not particularly concerned about posts of mine being deleted, it happens. I am deeply concerned when mods interpretation seem to count more than a rational analysis of the context and, more important, without questioning about the intent of whom replied, aka myself.

Answer 1

You received plenty of feedback and had 4 days in which to improve your answer; instead, you chose to be argumentative.

"its main advantage as far as your project is concerned ..." sure sounds like a product recommendation to me. This is why reviewers responded as they did. We can't read your mind to discern your intent; we can only respond to the words in front of us. If you can see that you are being misinterpreted, maybe it's time to step back and try a different approach.

Answer 2

I remember coming across this Q and your answer a while back and thinking you were recommending a product too. I stopped reading your answer after the first sentence due to that.

Three separate people interpreted your question as recommending the OP do something else, and two of them told you so. Perhaps that wasn't your intent, but the obvious way to proceed would have been to edit your answer. I would have rewritten the first sentence to something like "This doesn't directly answer your question, but here is a example of a complete system that has successfully done something similar.".

Instead of doing the obvious and reasonable thing when you found people misinterpreting your post, which would have been to reword it, you instead spent the effort to argue and be a dick about it. This further reinforced instead of dispelling the misinterpretation (if there ever actually was one), so it should be no surprise your answer got deleted.