The problem with dang's wish stated in the linked thread is that the goal is most likely unattainable.

While the community as a whole has a collective memory, that does not mean that every participant has the sum of all that experience and knowledge, because individuals constantly join and leave the community.

This means that for some parts of the community, every new post (in this case by Wolfram) is one of "The first few times this came up" when it was "worth noting (and I confess to laughing at the same parodies that everyone else did)".

Because of the nature of Hacker News (the focus on individual stories (links)) the only way for new members of the community to be "nudged in the right direction", as it were, is to come upon one of these comment sections and either see the problem for themselves or see it called out (as here).

The fun thing about that discussion is note in the first reply:

"[When there is a single Official Wolfram Ego Bitching subhthread in every thread discussing Wolfram], then everyone can enjoy complaining about Wolfram's ego there, without it taking over the rest of the discussion. (This would work better if HN offered a way to "collapse" subthreads.)"

And now we actually have collapsable subthreads!

* proceeds to collapse grandparent

The deranged Wolfram story I find most delightful is about the pains he took micromanaging the illustrations in his book, and how hard he is to work for. He required a photo of a leopard, to illustrate how its spots were similar to a reaction diffusion system. But he rejected the first leopard photo and demanded it be replaced by another, because he didn't like its facial expression.

Doesn't sound weird at all. If I would be writing a book, I would like to direct what kind of photos it includes.

Oh yes, I think it's charming how aesthetically picky he was about which cat pictures to use in his book. It's not enough for the science and mathematics behind the gigantic book to be ground breaking, revolutionary, earth shattering and astounding -- but also the leopard's smirk can't give readers the wrong impression.

Ok, point taken, it's a dead horse. Is there an argument that ignoring social pathology and carrying on is dangerous in the long run though?

The alternative is to register the pathology as known, considered, addressed, and ... not of particular interest in the current context.

dang's post attempts to do this. HN has poor tools for surfacing such actions and intentions (it has poor tools in a large number of ways, but the very tool paucity also creates, at times, some useful positive dynamics).

Sometimes you want low friction, sometimes you want high friction.

A wheel, particularly in the flanged steel-on-rail or rubber tyre-on-road varieties, is a device for offering exceptionally low friction and resistance in one dimension, and very high resistance in another. Among the results of such a dynamic is the property, literally, of keeping a vehicle on track.

I think HN's quirks of high- and low-affordance capabilties operate somewhat in this nature.

The argument is that going on about it in every single Wolfram thread is just as quickly "repetitive and boring" and worse, makes it impossible to actually talk about whatever it is that Wolfram is writing about. It's hardly ignoring if everyone already knows about it and the chances of anyone saying anything new and interesting on the topic is just about nil.

There's an argument, sure, but you're basically arguing against the entire concepts of politics and perspective.

I dunno, if people weren't so bored of fact checkers pointing out lies, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.