One issue with this regulation is that hacker news is an international community and there are strong cultural differences in what is perceived as being too neg

One issue with this regulation is that hacker news is an international community and there are strong cultural differences in what is perceived as being too negative. In the US, people have a very low threshold and there is always a high pressure to be positive and supportive. People from Europe perceive this as phony and they tend to be more direct with their criticism. I lived in both cultures and observed that in the US there is a strong emphasis on presenting criticism in a considerate and toned-down way, whereas in Europe people are better at dealing with open criticism. There are merits to both approaches and I don't think it's a good idea to force the American way of doing things on this community. Hacker news needs to evolve a composite of the two ways to deal with criticism in an organic fashion.