I understand and agree with everything you said. Coda has every right to be angry with Stephen. He might even have the right to sue Stephen. Nonetheless, swearing in public like that was simply not the way to deal with the situation. Think about it in purely strategic terms. What outcome might Coda or Yammer want from this? Perhaps for it to fade away, perhaps for Stephen to apologize, perhaps something else. Does snarling at Stephen bring any of those outcomes closer? Did the swipe at HN? If Stephen or anybody else - I suppose some might think that includes me - harbored any ill will, wouldn't this just give them even more opportunity to do some damage?

Sometimes the right thing to do when you're wronged is to let it pass, no matter how much it sticks in your craw, for strategic reasons. Sometimes giving in to that moral-outrage addiction simply does more harm than good, no matter how justified the outrage might be. And yes, I've very much been in that position myself. It sucks, but I've learned that it sucks even more to have a self-inflicted wound on top of the one I got from someone else.