>But this is all meta, and HN isn't a forum for us to be debating communication skills.

It's as important as any in society, as well as the workplace. You're generally not going to get very far with technical brilliance alone.

>Doing so is more futile amongst a group often known for lacking in communication skills in inverse proportion to their intellectual skills.

Given the number of submissions on the topic in the last month or two, I think the HN crowd would disagree with you.