[engendered]

This just dropped by -4 in a ten second span (edit: moments after another -4), essentially confirming the suspicion.

Do the moderators of HN have any comprehension of how completely incompetent they are at what they're doing? HN today is the perfect example of a profoundly squandered opportunity, and it literally gets worse by the day. It has gone from must-visit to "meh...everything else is exhausted".

But I get a little bit of delight imagining these -- and I apologize, but it is the only word that fits -- hacks conjecturing up some philosophy that makes them productive and useful, instead of destructive and futile.

[chc]

> This just dropped by -4 in a ten second span (edit: moments after another -4), essentially confirming the suspicion.

If I made a comment along the lines of "I think the HN moderators hire hitmen to kill commenters they don't like," that would probably get downvoted very quickly and very harshly. This would not be proof that the moderators put hits on commenters — it just shows that baseless conspiracy theories are not very popular here.

[engendered]

Indeed, that is one boorish tactic of making a banal, sycophantic comment. The use of a garbage strawman really put it into a higher echelon.

However I stick by my observation. The brain trust behind HN moderation, having moved on from their asinine slowbans and hellbans, have gone to something that they think is trickier. Only it's, again, hilariously naive.