Maybe it's because I'm getting older, or maybe the users on HN have really changed, but having been an HN member for over 10 years now, I cannot recall a time when it was so regularly swamped by people with an almost religious fervor about the topic du jour. Just in the last few months it was third-party reddit apps, and now this. In my eyes, the quality of conversation has degraded markedly with many comments more appropriate for Twitter (how many variations of "We're so back!!" must be posted?).

Of course many people will disagree with me here, but I'd love to see mute functionality added to HN. If there's anything I've learned from Twitter, it's that when a forum gets big enough, proactively moderating your own experience is essential to enjoying it and cut down on the noise.