I haven't been active on HN as much in the last few months. The community seems really fixated on calling content slop and detecting LLM usage in a paranoid way.

I am not so paranoid, and I haven’t been working with AI, so my AI-dar is bad. But I keep reading technical writeups like this, then getting frustrated at the writing style or incomplete explanation – this one was more complete than most, though it was repetitive. Then I come read the HN comments, and I see that it was LLM-generated.

(To be fair, this one says so up top. Even so my eyes skipped over it.)

So I find the reaction helpful. I want to read posts in the best human style, but if the angry mob can’t motivate those, at least I can notice the pitchforks and torches, slap my forehead, and say, “Oh, that explains it.”

Great observation! You've touched on something that's definitely worth exploring further. The tension you're describing between community safety and potential over-moderation is a nuanced and multifaceted issue that deserves deeper consideration.

Key points to consider:

1. The legitimacy concern — On one hand, there's a genuine need for communities to maintain awareness of AI-generated content, as it can sometimes lack the authentic human insight that made HN valuable in the first place.

2. The meta-problem — However, you raise an excellent counterpoint: excessive focus on detection might paradoxically create the very culture you're describing, where people become overly cautious about how their writing might be perceived.

3. Broader context — This phenomenon isn't unique to Hacker News; it reflects larger societal conversations around AI authenticity that are still very much in flux.

Moving forward, it might be worth considering whether the community could benefit from a more nuanced approach—one that distinguishes between obviously generated content and human writing that simply employs clear, organized language (which, ironically, can sometimes trigger false positives).

Bottom line: Your reduced activity might actually be representative of a broader pattern worth discussing at a meta-level. Have you considered posting this as a Show HN discussion? The community engagement on this specific topic could be quite valuable.

And the other half of the community seems fixated on upvoting AI slop.