It's very hard to be intellectually curious when I'm only allowed to post 3-4 comments an hour. What if I'm having a conversation with someone? Why am I not allowed to respond?
We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. We're happy to take the rate limit off if people give us reason to believe that they understand the site guidelines and sincerely want to use HN in the intended spirit. But it's best to email hn@ycombinator.com and ask us to look into it.
I realize it's annoying to be rate limited, but it's one of the few (crude) software tools we have to try to put off the descent of the forum into flamewar, so dropping the mechanism isn't really an option.
