[domador]

[This is not a direct reply to your comment, but a comment on Hacker News itself.]

It's interesting that a couple of minutes ago, I was unable to even attempt to reply to wrren's comment. It was grayed out, and I guess you can't reply to grayed-out comments. I read the comment and saw an exploration of ideas, not something that would be destructive to the Hacker News community or experience. I reloaded the page, the comment is no longer gray, and I am now able to reply to it. I guess it's been upvoted into acceptability again, and eligible for further discussion.

Did I just imagine that there was no reply link after this comment? (It's an honest question, since this might be the first gray comment that I've tried to reply to.)

Ironically enough (given that Paul Graham founded it) Hacker News itself seems to provide tools for silencing unconventional ideas through downvoting (unconventional for HN.) Apparently, it's not a particularly new problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17612885

Seems like there's some aggressive conventionally-mindedness right here on Hacker News. It happens structurally, in the way downvoting unpopular ideas gets them silenced, and conventionally, in the way discussion about voting on Hacker News is discouraged.

[detaro]

Deep threads hide the reply button temporarily as an anti-flamewar thing (You can still reply by clicking on the timestamp to go to the comments permalink, it's just intended to be a soft deterrent against too much back-and-forth). Purely downvotes shouldn't disable replies, only if a comment gets killed (by flags or automated filters) it gets disabled.

[domador]

So, it's not related to whether a comment is grayed out, but to how deep it is and how recently it was posted. That's helpful to know. Thanks!

[Qworg]

All communities, including this one, require curation and moderation. The down vote is a way to drive out "non-HN" ideas out of the square, as determined by the broad subset of HN users (and a small number of super users).

It isn't aggressively conventionally minded, it is pro social, as well as likely the only way to maintain a level of discourse that the majority wants.