What a pile of meaningless buzzwords.
Slashdot's moderation system didn't lead people to think "no one used windows", the userbase just didn't like microsoft.
Beyond that, having to re-debate every single idea every single time it's brought up is inefficient to the point of uselessness. We, as individuals, don't have time to verify every single theory from first principles, so we rely on tools like "moderation" as a heuristic to make progress.
Eh, I think he brings up a pretty good point but I wouldn't say HN is any better. People here think that MacOS has high usage numbers and iPhones are the most used phone, when that's not the case. There are also a few very, very misguided ideas about software development that definitely are over-represented on HN in large part due to the (apparently, according to polls) very inexperienced nature of most HN visitors and the things they tend to work on (low-skill/low-knowledge, "high-in-their-mind"-velocity work).
HN has some very clear bubbles that probably wouldn't happen without a popularity system tied to its comments and submissions; maybe the janitorial duty of removing spam and so on is enough for a page like this. I'm not sure I see the merits of upvotes and downvotes at this point.
> What a pile of meaningless buzzwords.
I completely disagree. That was a very coherent and well articulated comment. Having a useful vocabulary is not the equivalent of using a bunch of buzzwords.