I think he misread it. I had to absorb the sentiment of the rest of the post and re-read your first line a few times to properly parse it.

For me, "the less you discourage" reads less clearly than "the more you encourage". I realise that the two aren't identical in meaning, but I would have chosen the latter because a compounded minimization ("the less you don't do x") is generally less immediately clear than a maximization ("the more you do x").

This is compounded by your opening of "Another side of this". This can mean "another aspect of the problem you describe which agrees with your point" but it can also mean "another aspect of how sentencing should work that comes to a different conclusion". For many, the latter is more intuitive ("two sides to every story" etc etc).

Not passing judgement on how you worded your post, just explaining why someone might misread it.

Fair. Looks like he's not alone, too. I'll keep that in mind!

You know -- I think we're on the same page wrt how the punishment really ought to fit the crime; I misread what you were saying :)

Maybe I should take it down -- initially I thought you were talking about discouraging crime w/ a big punishment, but in fact you were talking about discouraging a criminals restraint because they're already going to get nailed in a big way...

I think I'll take mine down and let your original post stand.

Edit: or I'll just leave it so the flow is preserved -- there's a thread here now that explains everything. Let the downvotes fit the crime though, please ;)

Leaving it is good by me. Like I said, it's a reasonable comment, just seemed out of place since it sounded like disagreement but said the same thing. Now that everyone knows what's up, it fits fine.