I've read so many meta articles (including ones I've written) that I'm beginning to get a bit lost. Didn't raganwald already write something like this? Maybe a

I've read so many meta articles (including ones I've written) that I'm beginning to get a bit lost. Didn't raganwald already write something like this? Maybe a couple of times? I float in and out of the community, sometimes being gone for a week and sometimes checking everyday. For many years. As we all know, meta commentary is not new here. Yes, the magic sauce has worn off. People who spend weeks working on things are treated with easy criticism -- there's a reason PG asked for us to "be nice" to the new bunch of YC guys. People who post fluffy group-think are rewarded. What this leads to is more and more fluff, less and less real work that we can help with by commenting. Since we are more likely to be emotionally moved by things that are higher on the list, we feel as if we must comment [insert self-serving reason here]. This leads to comment-bloat, especially as traffic numbers soar. I wish I had some secret formula to make it all better, but the way the site is structured, emotional response rules, not quality. When you vote up, you are saying "hell yeah!" not "my logical brain has deduced this to be of higher quality than average" -- at least in the aggregate. So the site is performing exactly as it should, sadly.