I can understand not caring how many people read the site, so long as the hacker community is well served. I guess I'm just not quite clear on the downside of

I can understand not caring how many people read the site, so long as the hacker community is well served. I guess I'm just not quite clear on the downside of growth outside of this community; more useless comments? Comment spam? I also wonder if blocking those Yahoo and MSN crawlers would make it harder for them to compete with Google, because I consider competition a good thing. Eventually, by allowing them access, they may continue to improve their search product. Perhaps most importantly, I worry that blocking these crawlers might be seen as a political statement against Yahoo and MSN, one which they might take into account when considering the acquisition of a ycombinator funded startup. -- Fred