Why HN is the way it is, and why we hope it will stay that way
The thing I really like about HN's commenting system is that it's explicitly designed to <i>discourage</i> flamewars -- the way heavily downvoted comments end up "dead" means that "edgy" content is quickly buried.<p>Contrast that to Facebook or Twitter, where <i>only</i> positive signals exist, and the entire system is designed to surface "edgy" content as much as possible (because it gets the most engagement!)