[benbeltran]

Kind of an aside, but still relevant to part of your post. Whining about the content and whining about the meta whining is part of any sufficiently old community. I can recall from communities I've managed, and from ones I've participated in there's /always/ metacommentary and metametacommentary. The best thing to do in these cases is not to engage it. But no, HN will never get past all the whiny meta and there's very little we can do about it except letting it slide :(

Quick Edit: This is one of the reasons why I love discourse, it encourages metadiscussion in a separate part, and while it doesn't keep it from contaminating, it seriously helps a lot to focus it and guide it.

[lsiebert]

That's one of the reasons I like Metafilter :).

[jholman]

benbeltrain: How does that work in Discourse?

lsiebert: How does that work on Metafilter?

[benbeltran]

Well, in discourse it's more convention than anything. But the first category created, is a `meta` category. But this explains it better: http://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-meta/5249/2