I have a theory: all the jokes parse out to "Eliezer is brilliant, and we have a bunch of esoteric in-jokes to show how smart we are". This isn't making fun of an authority figure.

This doesn't mean the article was a bad idea, or that I didn't think it was funny. I also don't think it's strong evidence that LW and SIAI aren't cults.

ETA: XiXiDu's comment that this is the community making fun of itself seems correct.

Ok, I think I have an explanation for what's going on here. Those of us "old hands" who went through the period where LW was OB, and Eliezer and Robin were the only main posters, saw Eliezer as initially having very high status, and considered the "facts" post as a fun way of taking him down a notch or two. Newcomers who arrived after LW became a community blog, on the other hand, don't have the initial high status in mind, and instead see that post as itself assigning Eliezer a very high status, which they see as unjustified/weird/embarrassing. Makes sense, right?

(Voted parent up from -1, btw. That kind of report seems useful, even if the commenter couldn't explain why he felt that way.)

You seemed to seriously imply that Eliezer didn't understand that the "facts" thread was a joke, while actually he was sarcastically joking by hinting at not getting the joke in the comment you replied to. I downvoted the comment to punish stupidity on LW (nothing personal, believe it or not, in other words it's a one-step decision based on the comment alone and not on impression made by your other comments). Wei didn't talk about that.