I am currently spending my life working on signal processing - constructing a story of what is happening in the world from sensor data. And you know what - noise is good. You would perhaps think that the thing to do is to turn on the filters, crank 'em up, and don't ever let a noisy bit of data through.

But, of course, that does not work. Noise is helpful. It's still signal. I can construct more information from a noisy signal than an overly filtered one.

Back to forums, I was a participant in several for a different niche area. One was obsessed with post 'quality' - a horde of moderators swarming around, then after awhile they'd comb through every thread, deleting every comment they found not worthy so they would have some kind of pristine archive, and so on.

They utterly failed. Oh, they are still trundling along. But the sites with the industry leaders posting? Those are the ones with far less concern with 'quality'. Why would an expert spend time crafting an answer to somebody when it is likely or possible that it will either not get approved to show up, or later deleted? It made no sense to them, they vocally complained, were again and again told this was for the greater good, and so they all left. Now, if you want to talk to an expert, you go to one of the other forums; if you want to talk to a complete amateur, but with never a post off topic, well, you go to the controlled one. You'll get terrible advice, or no advice at all, but hey, it's civil and on topic.

I've concluded nothing about HN yet, but I don't forsee myself clicking away, endorsing post after post. This is mostly a 'consume' site for me, and occasionally, post. I don't want to spend my time endorsing and clicking away. I'll upvote once in a while, and almost never downvote. I can't see that changing much. I can't see posting anymore; I am giving you value (or trying to), and you hold it hostage. Ya, okay, if that is how you feel, I'll go elsewhere. I recognize that sounds petulant, but back to the site in the first paragraph - a lot of people stopped posting because so much did not survive the great purges that went on. Why go to this effort if others will silence you?

Noise is not the enemy of quality. It is not the enemy of value. It's a wonderful side effect of free thinking, innovative thinking, of creation, of invention. It's messy, it's beautiful. I love noise for what it represents. Long live noise.