It surprises me that there seems to be quite a few people who have genuine contempt for the Hacker News forum. I think that people here are for the most part reasonable, even though we don't always give out our viewpoints in a straightforward, snark-free manner (but few Web communities are free of that kind of stuff). Posts that are very unreasonable seems to tend to be downvoted. But then I think that maybe I've become too coloured by this forum to really have the outside view of this place.