I'm sorry. Comments here used to be a lot more thoughtful (in both senses). I'm planning on working on this problem soon.

This particular link is a perfect troll — the headline stabs at your WTF button, then the comment linked to has zero context clarifying the reasoning but tons of technical details that fuel the nerd rage — people were so trolled by the perceived linkrot and cache problems that they didn't even bite at the obvious SQL & ORM bait!

I don't think you can fix this with code, much less your usual tactic of adding heuristics to moderate/voteweight/ban.

Not to be HN-litist, but I think this post is drawing questionable comments in particular because it's linked in several places from Reddit, from which we are likely receiving a flood of users uninclined to self-moderate.

I hope that one of the approaches you try is recursive on who tends to vote for whom.

I feel your pain, in more ways than one. Any site that keep running for a decade is impressive in and of itself.

I, for one, won't try to second-guess your decisions. The Onion has been around for a long (internet) time, and I suspect most of the Web101 suggestions have been considered.

Besides, you guys have left me in stitches too many times for me to be particularly critical. Thanks for existing!