And, at the same time, it seems to me we should also recognize that this is extremely minor. Where's the harm? The harm is extremely minor. For instance, suggestions that the moderators are out of control or have a holier-than-thou attitude seem over-the-top and unfounded; those kinds of statements aren't helping. SF moderators work hard and have a huge workload, and we're all human -- we make mistakes. But, at the same time... the first step to improving is to acknowledge the mistakes and reflect on how we can do better in the future. Anyway, sharing an outside perspective, fwiw.

But, more importantly, if it's a moderator who feels insulted, it's usually better to let another moderator make the judgement call and handle it. This isn't always necessary -- in clearcut cases or if you feel comfortable defending your action on meta, go ahead -- but when reasonable people can disagree, it's better to let another moderator handle it. From that perspective, it sounds like this could have been better handled (with the benefit of hindsight), and your answer isn't acknowledging that.

Sven, I'll share a different perspective (and I intend this with the best of intentions -- not trying to criticize). I don't think it's accurate to say that Stack Exchange's policy is that anyone can call anything they want an insult -- anything goes. Rather, there's a certain amount of judgement involved -- even if someone is personally insulted, moderators usually shouldn't remove a comment if they judge it's not actually insulting and it otherwise has value. (cont.)

@Iain, one way to avoid the situation in the future is: if a moderator is insulted by someone's comment on their answer, it's probably better to let another moderator handle it. This is standard guidance for moderators: it's usually better not to moderate issues that arise on your own question/answer. It's not a hard-and-fast rule -- especially when the case is clearcut -- but it's often helpful.

"This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful" - determine whether that applies, then act accordingly. (Since you mentioned low quality...)

Perhaps it'd help to understand that encouraging people to "participate" in some abstract general sense is not a goal. Instead, the site wants to encourage people to contribute to its purpose -- which is asking high-quality questions and providing high-quality answers. You discovered that the site makes it hard for a new user to "participate" in ways that don't contribute to the site's purpose. That's by design. It might sound harsh, but we've found that this structure helps keep quality high.

The first two paragraphs are correct: having a second account is absolutely allowed, but you must make sure the two never interact (this has been documented on Meta.stackexchange.com). I disagree that it's dishonest.

These are very helpful. However, I suggest adding duplicate:0 to all of these search terms. Questions that are closed as a duplicate don't do a great deal of harm and aren't worth trying to delete, so this helps you focus your effort on the other bad questions.