HN is, at least in theory, a place where being polite when giving feedback is the norm. Reddit, on the other hand, is a place where humour and rudeness is not only expected, but wanted by the majority.
in the mainstream subreddits, yes. But in the more niche ones, the discourse is civil if not heartwarming (I frequent the bicycling subreddit, personally)
Sure, I just meant within the same 99% that minimaxir was talking about regarding the adverts. (I've found plenty of friendly people in sports, gay and classical music sub-reddits myself.)
In HN they don't float. They go down slowly in a deterministic way. (Perhaps the details of the algoritm have changed a little.) From http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#12may11 :
> Now instead of being ranked by points, jobs simply start at position 4 and slide down the page at 4 positions per hour.
Is that so? I personally go to HN for the comments, mostly. The articles themselves are just fuel for discussion, as I see it. Then again, I only use the daemonology Hacker News Daily as well, so I'm hardly seeing all of it.
I think I've seen a reddit ad upvoted once, maybe twice. The vast majority of them (even when they seem like the hivemind would like them) are downvoted. It's strange.