Yeah, news.yc has changed my expectations forever about the way people interact with each other online. I can't look at any other forums these days without being appalled at how casually rude everybody is.

This is the #1 for me. There are other ways to filter content and block ads, but finding quality conversations is difficult.

Honestly, if they removed the URLs from the front page and just kept the conversation topics and community, I'd still get 98% of the value from the site.

(Ads are value-neutral for me, incidentally.)

ur gay, lol

die in a fire, rtard.

:)

Hacker News — Where pun threads are not even tolerated in meta-discussions.

But threads that point out the intolerance of pun-threads are well-tolerated. I feel like The Collective has saved me time! Or something...

(More interesting is how these things fluctuate. At one point, the "ur gay" comment was around +8, and my "die in a fire, rtard" was pretty close. Now they are both -4.)

Heh. I'll pay a few karma to crack necessary wise. What else can you buy with it, right? It is interesting that so much info is lost by only displaying the net, though. A comment with zero activity is indistinguishable from one with 100+ and 100-. I'd be more interested in "most controversial" than "most net upvotes" given the choice. Not a big deal, though. Simpler is probably better.

Edit: added 2nd "net"