I have great respect for moot's statement that he created 4chan partly because he thought "people need a place to be wrong". As in, people need a place to expe

I have great respect for moot's statement that he created 4chan partly because he thought "people need a place to be wrong". As in, people need a place to experiment with ideas that are controversial or even downright stupid with being afraid. 4chan and Something Awful provided that. I think it's healthy for the world to have a few places cordoned off to be primordial slimepools/cesspits. But, I wouldn't given anyone a hard time for trying very hard to not be one of those places. For example, I think a big part of the continuing high signal/noise ratio at HN is it's tradition of downvoting sarcasm, memes, jokes, fluff, "nice post!" and other low-signal comments. As HN has grown, this has been slipping. But, it us already lasted much longer than I expected.