I posted one of the Erlang things (the second, I believe). Mind you, I certainly wouldn't have done that had there been 13 or even 5 up there already (and my po

I posted one of the Erlang things (the second, I believe). Mind you, I certainly wouldn't have done that had there been 13 or even 5 up there already (and my post actually was of something new). Anyway, I think you're making a mistake to personify this into a "segment of users" trying to tell the rest what to do. My guess it was a lot more random than that. The real lesson of HN, and the thing that prevents events like this from knocking it off the rails, is its aggressive but unobtrusive moderation. When chaotic stuff happens that gets out of control, it gets corrected. This is also the answer to your human-nature-based critique of the community (i.e. left to its own devices, it would degrade in the way you describe, but it isn't left to its own devices). Edit: now that I think of it, maybe HN is kind of an instance of the "libertarian paternalism" that's recently become popular in policy thinking (as in the book Nudge).