There were definitely a few overly harsh and trollish comments on the article yesterday attacking Dave, but looking at it now it seems like 90% of the comments

There were definitely a few overly harsh and trollish comments on the article yesterday attacking Dave, but looking at it now it seems like 90% of the comments were either defending Dave or attacking his critics or apologizing for the trolls. It sucks that the comments seemed to turn into a referendum on Dave but it was still orders of magnitude more civil and intelligible than how it would have gone down on any other site. I don't know that HN itself is the problem here, it's still pretty exemplary compared to the competition. Maybe a broader point could be made that it's depressing that the site with by far the best comments can still descend into those kinds of discussions. For context, it's also worth noting that Dave is no stranger to controversy and has angered more than a few people over the years. I have no idea whether he was right or wrong in those situations, but I'm sure that that animosity played a role in some of the comments people made yesterday. Many of the really negative comments didn't seem like typical kneejerk Internet comments so much as people with grudges against him personally, and those grudges bled out into the discussion. Again, no judgement either way here, just providing context.