[Petrushka]

It's Plato's Ring.

Frankly though, people around here are generally as reasonable as you'll find out on the interwebs. Sure you'll have people come in and stir things up, but generally I get the sense that the majority of comments and their authors are attacking the question at hand as opposed to the person behind it, and are doing so in a respectful way. The internet as currently constructed will never be perfect in that regard because of the lack of accountability, but Hacker News in general seems to move against the general stream and have some sense of decency, the way that say, early EBay is often described as having.

For the Plato reference by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges