If you want I can talk your ears off about the Demand Media model, but one very smart thing they did was jump ahead of the curve by buying under-monetized sites aimed at middle American ladies which had existed for a decade, and then started building them out. StackOverflow, by comparison, has no decade old links because it has not even existed for two years yet. I don't think it is necessarily a question of link richness of the audience or linkability of the content there (as a matter of fact, I'd guess that StackOverflow probably accumulates links much faster than eHow -- like, order of magnitude faster, despite the fact that eHow has 40 times more monthly visitors).

That post was deleted, linking to this I presume: http://blog.styleguidance.com/post/391922539/stackoverflow-g...

yes that was it.

Apparently my blog got permabanned on HN for outing that Techcrunch intern.

Really? Although I found it to be in very poor taste it was on your own blog and I'd be surprised and disappointed if this was the case. Any moderators willing to confirm or deny?

it was submitted to HN too(made the front page)...got an email from pg for it...called me an asshole and said that he was embarrassed that such meanness was posted on HN

"got an email from pg for it...called me an asshole and said that he was embarrassed that such meanness was posted on HN"

Good on you, PG!

It wasn't exactly your finest hour.

That said, I (perhaps naively) assume that the HN community is strong enough to self heal sans permaban - the intent of flag, innit?

I think most news.yc users overestimate the value of voting. It's in your face, you see the numbers on every item, so it's easy to assume that's the most important thing. It isn't. It's just a guide, that indicates what the users are currently thinking. Sadly, it doesn't work to put too much stock in what they're thinking.

Pretty much every site on the internet where users gather and talk has eventually turned into a cesspool of angry arguments and spite, just before imploding altogether. Clay Shirky wrote the definitive essay on the subject:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

So the evidence is pretty clear: leave the users to their own devices, and they'll eventually destroy the community. pg and the editors are well aware of this. So they curb bad behavior, behind the scenes. Many, many users and submissions get banned or killed. If it wasn't that way, this community definitely would not have survived for three-plus-years now.

And if you ask me, pg did absolutely the right thing banning that blog entry. It was exactly the sort of ugly, spiteful thing that sends a community spiraling into its death throes. I'm glad it's gone.

I suppose flag is a form of voting, but I think you underestimate the value of HN culture. Angry arguments and spite have rarely been tolerated here.

It appears PG didn't ban a blog entry, but rather a domain, and one which had previously been a source of useful content. If we apply this same standard we ought start banning entire domains left, right and centre: first cab off the rank should be techcrunch.com

As a matter of fact, many domains have been banned. Hundreds. Again, perfectly necessary to keep the peace.

just a small correction, he didn't just ban that blog entry, he banned the entire domain.

I think the one thing that SO is missing is one of their claimed features, being a "community wiki". If they could somehow leverage that content in more of an article format then they could have that "article site" aspect. Right now they just look Q&A.