No. This conception of "the democracy makes the rules" is what turns sites into inane cat-picture/political-argument factories. Tiny democracies can work as closed systems, but when they're open to people entering/leaving them, every change will precipitate a change in membership to realign the community's interests with the change. This causes a positive feedback loop, where eventually, for example, nobody is left except Apple addicts.

Sites have purposes (otherwise, there would only need to be one website on the Internet, that served everyone's needs equally.) Letting the community decide both what, and who, the community is to be composed of, leads inevitably to every community being composed of "everyone," and having a purpose of "general interest." I, for one, would rather have a place that just has "Hacker News."

You say this, yet the submitter has been here over 1000 days, and over 100 longer than you. Evidently at least some of the long-timers, from when this was a much more closed environment, do indeed see this as interesting news.

So the question becomes: what's the definition of "hacker news", if not a user-submitted aggregator? And where do you define what is and what is not HN-worthy? It's apparently not age-related, nor precedence, nor community, and I don't know how you'd define what's hacker-related and what's not, barring strict, literal "hacks" (and then how about circuit bending to make music?).

> I, for one, would rather have a place that just has "Hacker News."

Amen, brother.

It's just the fanboys voting it up. Nothing wrong with being a fanboy, I'm just saying. This news is of no interest to the general community here, except the people who love Apple more than themselves. And apparently, there are quite a few of these people here.

I come here to read news about startups, not to indulge in Apple lovefests. If I wanted to do that, I'd be over at TechCrunch.

People that blindly hate upon everything Apple is just as bad as people that blindly love Apple.

I'm not hating on Apple. Re-read my posts and tell me one place where I said anything negative about Apple.

I'm simply asking a question - why is this news relevant to this community and why do we have to have a top-story post on it every quarter? What use is that to anyone here?

And for this simple question, I have lost almost 40 points of karma in the last hour.

Thanks everyone. What a great community.

I'm calling your bluff.

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=schammy

The single submission you've made has been a link to a picture of Jobs in a 1984 motif - clearly negative about Apple.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1306919 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1306321 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1306314 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1306310 NOTE: Those last two are the exact same comment posted twice on the same article! You literally copy and pasted an anti-Apple comment so that it appeared multiple times for the same article. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281192

So, looking over your past 30 comments here on HN, 20% of them are negative about Apple.

You wanted people to look at your history and your history shows a negative bias against Apple.

I was talking about this conversation thread, not my posting history in general. Yeah I don't like Apple, but in this particular thread, I said nothing negative about them at all. That's what I meant. I was just asking a question, "why is this relevant to HN", and now have lost almost 100 points of karma.

What does that say about this community? Nothing good in my opinion. But obviously, anyone who doesn't drink the Apple kool-aid doesn't have a valid opinion around these parts.

I expect to lose another 20 points of karma from this post. Have at it, sheeple.

Edit: Ya know what, after all this, I just don't see the purpose of participating in this site anymore. I was asking a perfectly valid question and received almost nothing but hate in response. Obviously I'm not welcome around here. I will send an email to HN to have my account deleted.

So long.

FWIW I up'ed your initial question but down'ed some of your replies. Not due to your views of Apple (couldn't care less..), but because you seem to be acting kind of silly and trying really hard to not understand how Apple's current performance, and it's implied future performance, wouldn't be news to hackers and startups.

If you're being genuine, there's no need to leave - just try harder to understand or ignore the Apple stuff. If not, whatever.

p.s. for someone calling others "sheeple" I just want to point out that you seem rather concerned and emotional over your karma, with karma simply being an average of how those around you tend to see you.

Sheep?

>Thanks everyone. What a great community.

We do what we can to discourage repetitive whining. I'd say it works pretty well, because the site as a whole is remarkably free from it.

I do agree that going against the grain isnt very well rewarded on hn (or for most online communities for that matter). But you do have my respect for expanding the discussion space and asking what I think is a legitimate question.

It's just the fanboys; try to ignore them. They downvote anyone who expresses an opinion which they disagree with, or which they think is anti-apple. When the more sane users get to these comments, you'll regain at least a bit of your karma, probably.