> On HN, if someone makes low-quality posts, everyone sees it until it gets downvoted into oblivion. I very, very rarely see that in merely low-quality posts.

> On HN, if someone makes low-quality posts, everyone sees it until it gets downvoted into oblivion. I very, very rarely see that in merely low-quality posts. Those that are actually downvoted enough to be hidden are hidden for good reasons. I am sure you could find a handful, but I have never seen a hidden post about which I regretted it was not visible (I’d be curious to see how many you can find). It usually is proper bullying or racist rants. Now, stories get flagged regularly because they go against the grain, and there are several of them I wish we could have discussed. But looking at the new stories, the flagging mechanism gets rid of much more spam than unpopular posts. Anyway, I am not really willing to buy that without some statistics. > As a result, behavior which might be a red flag on one forum may just be part of the ecosystem in another forum. That is certainly true. But I find HN to be on the good side in that respect. Much better than the anything goes of *chan, the constant shitposting of mainstream subreddits (though there are some subreddits I love with great communities), or the constant passive aggressiveness of ./ and el reg (at least when I frequented those; I never looked back after leaving). Ars is nice as well, but a huge troll magnet.