I lament the humourlessness of HN 99% of the time, but the disproportionately important 1% counterpoint is that this can easily set off an irrecoverable death spiral.

Consider why HN is a higher-quality forum than Reddit for most purposes; Reddit has been overrun with trolls, neckbeards and just very "online" personalities, but the wrong kind of "online". More 4chan, less "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".

I don't know if one remembers Kuro5hin, the "un-Slashdot" alternative of the very early 2000s. I still have motor memory for the domain in my fingers, evidently. Something like this happened there.