There has been a change in behavior in the past few years, in fact it used to be that you could only become a HN member that can comment thus vote by posting a select number of threads before being able to comment. This actually kept the community on the more intelligent, factual, and serious side. Now it's not so serious.

This used to be the only place that I could visit to get away from Reddit behavior. It seems like the more obscure a social gathering is, the less Eternal September it suffers.