I'm signed up recently though I«ve been reading HN for quite a while. I can't tell how the community was before, but this is a fact: When i signed up a few day

I'm signed up recently though I«ve been reading HN for quite a while. I can't tell how the community was before, but this is a fact: When i signed up a few days ago, there was some "read this first" pages presented to me outlining the proper way to comment and so on. In it, was clearly stated that massive communities will become stupid even if they were once a place where topics were discussed in an intelligent way. A bit further it goes as far as presenting "hacker news approach on online comments" as an effort to provide a community above the average. But it fails miserably telling what sets HN's comments system from slashdot, redit, dig, etc. which is not much, if anything at all. So if you wondering why is HN going to hell in a handcart, it's for the same reason that all other online communities go that path too. This is inevitable unless the comments system change radically. An example of a community that didn't went down the drain: stackoverflow.