[Alex3917]

I've been meditating about this over the last couple of days, and I'm pretty sure there are three stages in the life cycle of social news site discussion quality.

1. "You're wrong because" (intelligent arguments)

2. "You're wrong" (no reason given, baseless opinions)

3. "You're a fag" (ad hominems)

Of course there will always be some of each in any given stage, so the way the community reacts to comments is probably almost more important than the comments themselves. Good users will put up with stupid links, but they'll leave if it becomes clear that their contributions aren't being valued and they start to feel alienated from the community.

Up until recently the discussion quality on news.yc has been in stage one, but I feel like it's been drifting toward stage two over the last couple of weeks. I'm especially worried as we get closer to the deadline for YC apps, since quality always goes downhill during those periods.

[DanielBMarkham]

Yeah you're a fag so what do you know.

(Sarcasm people! Sarcasm! Humor is tough to do in written form)

I would add that there is a step 0 which is "you may be right, although I do not understand how..." which is how, if you think about it, you talk to people you deeply respect. I guess that's the extra-credit level for the internet, because it's rarely seen.

[Spyckie]

Well, these types of threads always exist, but the real problem is that the ycnews community or the technology behind ycnews has failed to hammer it down. I'm all for democracy when the majority brings meaningful and intelligent articles to read, but in this situation I don't mind giving up equality for quality.

[gscott]

Any article title with "sex" in it should be harder to get to the first page, also any article title with curse words. Both are instant indicators of low quality.

[boucher]

Curse words aren't necessarily an indicator of low quality. Plenty of cogent arguments (and plenty of great literature) have been written that included cursing.

[edw519]

"Plenty of great literature" Agreed

"Plenty of great arguments" Disagree. AFAIC, credibility is lost as soon as you resort to this. Many don't think like I do, but many do. Is cursing really worth losing those of us who do?