And, in my observations, similar toxic conversations and people acting in bad faith are downvoted on reddit.

Who cares? My point was more that "at least we're better than reddit" is tacky. I don't think either of us are likely to objective make an assessment here either way on "toxicity of a topic on HN vs reddit".

>And, in my observations, similar toxic conversations and people acting in bad faith are downvoted on reddit.

I suppose I disagree with you there, as someone who hasn't used this website super much (about a year maybe?)and has been using reddit for about 5 years, HN seems much better to me in providing a longer, more concerted discussion. I didn't realise it was a meme though.

But that's just a personal opinion.

> they are clearly exactly what the community rejects

aka. "HN herd mentality." It feels me with sadness when I see the same trend over and over. People who have different opinions on certain political/social matters are being silenced by this whole "community rejects" bullshit.

Ok, forget "community" then. Point is, there is no agreed "The opinion of HN" in dead comments.

dead comments are not representative in general of HN since the downvotes/flags outnumber the upvotes/vouches.

That presumes all members vote & have down vote privilege: which is not true in either case.

This is an excellent point. Sadly, people who share less popular opinions will (probably) never get to the point when they can start up/down voting. So the only way to get these "superpowers" is to join the HN circle jerk.

That's only True if you constantly make unpopular opinions, such that they outweigh your regular ones. There are all sorts of neutral comments that can be made, a point a piece..

depends on what you consider to be a member. If there wasn't a karma cap, it'd be easy to sock-puppet-fake the votes.