[namelesstrash02]

You are implying that there is not absurd elitism present on HN (which, in my opinion, there very much is) as well as an exclusive environment. For example, while my comment is both an opinion and said in a non-confrontational way, the fact that it's going to be unpopular among the HN elitist crowd will likely mean some sort of negative repercussions (downvote or hellban).

For crying out loud, the thread about 'the evolution of HN' on the top of the front page is disallowing comments from "new" users! Holy smokes if that isn't a slap in the face of egalitarian content contribution. And let me be very frank here when I say that if your goal is to attract "hackers" -- and keep them around -- to contribute to items of interest to other "hackers" then it's in your interests to tone down any kind of totalitarian control over the conversation, or you will probably soon run out of "hackers".

Your comment that HN thrives because of the volume of people and diversity of content is exactly what paul graham is arguing against in his quotes on the recent TechCrunch article. He is saying that there's a direct correlation between scale and undesirable interaction and content. If that isn't exclusive and elitist, I don't know what is.

Again, I hope a fair amount of people get to read this comment before it (and this account) disappears, because it's a glaring problem with this system.