keep in mind, it's nobody's full-time job to maintain this thing. there are "the editors" who police content, and i'm pretty sure pg is the only one that works on the site itself, including the code. a list of banned sites is an easy way to cut down on maintenance.

for what it's worth, i'm pretty sure uncov.com is one of the banned sites. i keep showdead turned on, and i've seen articles submitted from there from otherwise legitimate users, and they immediately go dead.

I agree. I might, if I were king of HN, create a playground of sites I thought ( or the community thought ) were irrelevant or 'least likely to succeed' ( they do this in high school year books! ( they imply it by having 'most likely to succeed')). Another thing, don't down vote comments; if a comment is bad then it will be on the lower end of the page and that should speak for itself. Down voting comments, I am fairly sure, will discourage hackers that have cool ideas to contribute but that may have been inspired to write a one liner 'Beavis and Butthead' style sentence. This is merely people having fun. I think this type of fun is being discouraged. If comments are offensive then remove the user. . .. Why is there a need to punish, in front of the public HN community, people that would like to say things that they thought was witty ( or for that matter share a link that they thought was witty at the time ). By down voting input that is not 'bannable' ( I don't think that was a word ) you are simply discouraging contribution ( either links or comments )( even if that contribution is below your threshold of content you would idealize on this site ) and that is 1) a method to shape the landscape of the of the site in the way you see appropriate 2) discouraging hackers ( they will either leave or comment less ) and shaping the content that they feel comfortable contributing. I have a feeling pg would say something like 'you can make your own site and create the rules how you see fit', and I would agree with that as well.

Aargh. Trackpad + itty-bitty arrows = unintentional upmod. :-( I guess I'm forced to post an actual rebuttal now.

The only thing that really distinguishes news.yc from something like Reddit at this point is the high signal-to-noise ratio. No amount of flagging would be able to compensate for not banning any sites.