[phs318u]

I contend it’s unavoidable that all sites such as HN will tend towards Slashdot over time. The fundamental reason for this is that any appeal to respect the commons and allow others free use of it, will only fall on the ears of the respectful users of said commons. Other users will exploit the freedoms afforded by the commons to indirectly deny others said freedoms or to “poison” the commons against reasonable users. At some point a tipping point occurs and the majority of the reasonable users leave.

[dang]

That's the default for sure. But consider that (a) HN started as an experiment in avoiding that outcome (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html), and (b) it has managed to avoid it (mas o menos) for 12 years now. Doom may be inevitable (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), but 12 is a large number of internet years. I think it's safe to say that we've avoided at least the cruder versions of that phenomenon. And we've learned a lot in the process, so all is not yet lost.

The best way to not succumb to pathogens is for the community culture to build up strength to handle them. The real enemy is not the pathogens, but our own weak immunity to them. The strength we need most right now is for HN users to resist the temptation to call others astroturfers or spies simply because they hold opposing views—and to explain to fellow users that the rules here ask us not to do that, no matter how wrong the opposing view may be or feel.