And ChrisNorstrom's account is about 3 years old, so that fits a stereotype of those with the highest concern over a perceived drop in quality being the newest old-timers.

That's because newer members have no memory of how things once were. They have no way of comparing the current quality of the community with the previous quality of the community. Of course its older members who complain about this problem.

Heh, the crux of my point was the concept of "the newest older members."

There is a bit of survivorship bias at play. People who complain and don't see things improve leave. The only ones left are the ones who didn't have a problem.

I seem to recall the "don't claim hn is turning into reddit" already when I signed up 3 years ago. Sure enough, a little manual "webarchive blame", shows that that text appeared in 2009 already. [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20090712034454/http://ycombinato...