Axiom 1: Knowledgeable and mature people are repulsed by windbags and vicious people. Axiom 2: There are vastly more windbags and vicious people than there are

Axiom 1: Knowledgeable and mature people are repulsed by windbags and vicious people. Axiom 2: There are vastly more windbags and vicious people than there are knowledgeable and mature people. Axiom 3: Online moderation / gatekeeping is imperfect. Axiom 4: Successful moderation depends on a few keystone people. Lemma 1: A community of knowledgeable, mature people will be under perpetual assault by entropy. The internet baseline of know-nothing gasbags and vicious, damaged people will be pounding on the gates of any community. Lemma 2: Some of the horde will bypass any gatekeeping and moderation to land blows on the knowledgeable and mature people. They'll be repulsed, and some will leave the community. Lemma 3: The keystone moderators are inevitably among the people subjected to these blows. After a serious blow or one blow too many, some will get fed up and leave, and moderation will get worse, increasing the rate of knowledgeable and mature people getting repulsed by their own community and leaving. A hole will form in the fortifications, and the barbarians will flood in, driving out everyone mature and knowledgeable. Thereom: A knowledgeable, mature online community that is open to new users will eventually collapse into the internet baseline. Corollary 1: If you're knowledgeable and mature and currently part of an open online community you love, you too will eventually get repulsed by it and leave. Enjoy it while it lasts. Corollary 2: There are several knowledgeable and mature people here on Hacker News. They're here entirely because of dang. He is our keystone, weathering the assault of the barbarians for all of our sake. When he throws in the towel, we're done.