[mkempe]

The negativity became dominant post-PG. Unfortunately and disappointingly.

[added] To elaborate: his regular essays were thought-provoking and challenging, in a way that generally drove HN commenters to think and contribute. Nowadays there is a discouraging excess of emoting and belittling, even though the moderators have stepped up their nudges and interventions.

[faizshah]

That isn't true, the most famous example of HN negativity is Show HN: Dropbox which has been reposted quite a few times on HN since dropbox became dropbox.

Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306

[seba_dos1]

Uhm... how exactly is this thread a display of "negativity"? Most of the comments are pretty supportive and the critique was mostly placed on project's communication and not yet well-defined business model, which actually made a lot of sense.

Even the famous "you can already build such a system yourself (...) by FTP, curlftpfs, SVN, CVS" comment, which was often cited later as ridiculous, actually ends with a supportive reply and overall makes sense in the context of the whole thread. Heck, even comments like "seen it before in Coda" are in fact supportive and thankful. It's all very sensible, positive and IMO only worth any particular note here if you are (quite paradoxically) blinded with hindsight ;P

[eesmith]

I agree with you. Zed Shaw wrote an essay a few months ago on this topic, at https://zedshaw.com/2018/03/25/the-billionaires-vs-brandonm/ .

> In 2007 what ... wrote is actually valid given the environment. It was a total long shot that Dropbox would go anywhere, and hell it took a whole 11 fucking years for them to IPO. Box did it in 2014 and competes rather well compared to Dropbox. But let’s break down his comments from a 2007 perspective:

I agree with Shaw's analysis as well.

[mkempe]

First, one swallow does not a summer make...

Second, I notice you joined in July 2013. Sam Altman took over in February 2014, and PG's retirement had started earlier, so I wonder how much you experienced of HN before post-PG.