From my past experiences with online communities, if you want to keep a good community from regressing to the mean, you have to consciously ignore a lot of its

From my past experiences with online communities, if you want to keep a good community from regressing to the mean, you have to consciously ignore a lot of its members' wishes. Put another way: More people like Failblog than LWN. This does not mean that LWN should listen to people who want it to be more like Failblog. (Just so there's no confusion: This is just a general comment about online communities, not the original "Attention Moderators" thread.)