My crazy theory is that there are three different ways people treat online discussions: the "cocktail party" where people have interesting conversations, the "s

My crazy theory is that there are three different ways people treat online discussions: the "cocktail party" where people have interesting conversations, the "scientific conference" where the idea is to increase knowledge, and the "debate team" where you argue your position. Posting links to previous threads is perfectly reasonable in the "scientific conference" model, but rather rude in the "cocktail party" model. So any downvotes on your links are sort of proxy votes on "what HN is".