[KaeseEs]

Another negative trend that's clearly happened in this thread is drive-by voting: all of your interlocutor's posts have negative points, whereas the only posts in the thread that deserved any downvotes were the initial post (the only legitimate instance of the poorly-named 'middlebrow dismissal' that I can see) and the one where you put words in his mouth at the end ("Oh, so they're liars now?"). Postulate: very few people read anything but the first post and its reply, and upon doing so most upvoted all of your posts in the thread and downvoted all of your interlocutor's. Intelligent discussion indeed.

[jspthrowaway]

I didn't put words in his mouth, he wrote that they were lying to managers and possibly being deceptive. You also misquoted me, which is ironic given your criticism.

Your postulation is unwarranted, by the way, since my posts have been going up and down based upon their depth in the thread. The top comments have been upvoted more than the lower ones, and the lower ones have actually been muted somewhat. I would actually suggest that people are reading the thread and voting appropriately, and probably aren't making it deepest into the thread.

Your sweeping characterization of mindless Hacker News voters acting by whim is disconcerting, to say the least. That we're so fixated on the voting here when karma is absolutely worthless is equally annoying. I am, however, intrigued by the shift from very light gray back to legible that has taken place on his comments since the beginning of this meta discussion (starting with ww520's remark); there might be something to what you're saying, which is that people are acting based upon what others are saying -- that's troubling.