I don't understand this. The articles about _why sometimes were a little weird [analyzing him] but there were enough people in HN interested in it and _why was one of the greatest hackers in the ruby world.

The last time there was a deluge of erlang articles, it was to scare away a new wave of newbies. In this case the erlang articles are pushing out legitimate articles and very few of the erlang articles have any real discussion going on. I don't think, the tactic of erlang article flooding was appropriate this time.

Oh man, that's funny. So you purge articles about a programming language, about a legendary hacker, and about me off of "hacker news".

Yet, every other day you've got those crap posts from the Mixergy guy, random posts about idiotic sexist dating theories, a billion VC posts, and everything from techcrunch.

Apparently, "normal" at HN means "douche".

Keep on rockin' in the free world brother,

Zed

I think there are two audiences on this site constantly at war with one another: the neckbeard hackers and the douchebag startup CEO's (not that all hackers are total dorks and not that all CEO's are douches...but you get what I'm saying). These together probably make up about 40%-50% of the Hacker News audience. The other pieces of the whole are probably perfectly normal people who just like a good mix of news and code.

The neckbeards hate stuff like Mixergy or TC because they're not into the whole startup scene. The CEO's hate things like _why because they don't understand why he would spend more than 10 minutes a day doing something that doesn't make money (these guys poop while they're promoting synergy). As a result, when something like this happens and gets a lot of stories/attention, the neckbeards take the chance to submit that super 1337 Haskell tutorial they found 2 weeks ago which is subsequently voted up by the CEO's who just want this hobo, non-TechCrunched trash off the front page.

Then again, I have no data on this. Waffles.

A cursory glance at the front page would tell you that nothing has been "purged".

Nice! The classic Zed Shaw You're a douche™ argument. I wasn't expecting that. Well played.

I only come to HN for the lulz.

You'll be ok. I've never seen anything endanger your ego :)

You kidding? That's the funniest thing I've read all week.

Time to write an "HN community is a ghetto, fuck you all I'm too awesome for you guys" rant.

Yeah I find it hard to understand.

Zed,

Post a will-you-be-my-friend article looking for a co-founder. They will love you again.

-t

That's funny cause you say it's funny but you really think it's not.

Agreed.

the _why guff (not the original news all the "eulogies" etc) was getting a bit heavy but this is much worse.

Yes, it seems like logic and reasoning escaped HN when those started getting voted up.

people are logical and reasonable? since when? :)

I'm interested in all three of those subjects, particularly the first. Does that mean I shouldn't hang around HN anymore?

I haven't followed this site for very long, but is purging articles about which people are obviously interested a common practice? If so, for me, this site's value just went to zero.

No, as far as I can tell this was the second time in recent history that this happened. The first was to scare away a flood of new users that threatened to radically change the generally congenial culture here on HN. The _why articles were getting a bit excessive, but I'm not sure it raised to the level of an attempted purge.

Nothing has been purged. I'm not sure what the poster is talking about.

As I write this there are 10 articles out of 30 on the front page that do not have the word Erlang in it ... call me crazy, but any community that feels the need to promote their language to this extent is kind of an instant turn-off for me.

It's not about promoting Erlang, it's about getting all of the _why articles off the home page. Whether you agree with it or not, it has nothing to do with Erlang.

Thanks, the front page looks much better now.

Edit: The erlang crap is still there.

Obviously, people can't talk about what they want here. Only those articles which you deem kosher.

Seriously. Get a life.

education is better than irritation, if HN is incapable of providing productive news and information, by flooding it's face with only Erlang, then HN and all of you, need to go away, and find something more useful to do with your time.

Clearly people have other thoughts