This is a poor model of Hacker News comment phenomena. It requires all this extra complexity in the theory (comment “waves” and “triggered” reactions, highly ge

This is a poor model of Hacker News comment phenomena. It requires all this extra complexity in the theory (comment “waves” and “triggered” reactions, highly generic stereotypes of whether a responder is reflective and thoughtful, and whether this correlates with moderate opinions). From an Occam’s Razor point of view, this is a very poor theory, and I’d even go further and suggest it indicates unfair bias on the moderators’ part to implicitly subscribe to this judgment about early / quick responders. A competing, much simpler theory is that Hacker News, like everything else on the planet, is tribal and political. People add comments to support their tribe, and people use upvotes to support their tribe, while they use FAQ & guideline legalese, downvotes, shadow bans and timeout periods to punish opposing viewpoints and tribes they don’t like. I think the reason people look past this much simpler theory that comports much better with the evidence is that they want to protect a false sense that Hacker News is democratic and tolerant of unusual views, but it so deeply isn’t.