known better", Owen Thomas falsely reported that a drunk employee caused a major power outage at data center 365 Main by relying on the gossip of an unidentified source. Industry analyst and speaker Dave Taylor, who runs several technical and business websites, pointed out, "In journalism school, you would never even think about sharing any gossip of this nature without at least two reliable sources, but that never stopped Owen, nor did it stop other bloggers from picking up the incendiary story and shining a very negative light on the Web server hosting company in question." Under Thomas, the site became known for unsubstantiated gossip and "linkbait", or stories whose substance lay solely in the title, making it a tempting link for other on-line sites but that effectively only "baited" traffic to Valleywag. A small-but-influential tech website hosted by Y Combinator, Hacker News, banned stories from Valleywag. Y Combinator founder Paul Graham wrote "Several users have suggested we ban Valleywag, not for anything in particular that they write about, but because their articles are always such deliberate linkbait. I personally agree. In 99% of Valleywag articles, the most interesting thing is the title." Sixty percent of Hacker News readers voted yes to the ban. Several Silicon Valley writers questioned the tactics of Valleywag and similar sites, especially in the wake of the suicide death of executive Paul Tilley, who came under fierce attacks from anonymous bloggers. Writing in TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, himself a focus of Valleywag's posts, wondered when Valleywag would be the cause of a suicide: [For] people in Silicon Valley, who are not celebrities and who have no desire other than to build a great startup, a post on Valleywag comes as a huge shock. Seeing your marriage woes, DUI or employment termination up on a popular public website (permanently indexed by search engines) is simply more than they can handle. They have not had the ramp up time to build resistance to the attacks. Responding in The Daily Telegraph technology blog, Shane Richmond felt Arrington had a conflict-of-interest in writing the column: "As for Mr Arrington's suggestion, which basically amounts to 'I wish everyone would be nicer', I imagine it's largely motivated by the fact that, as he acknowledges in his post, he's a frequent target of Valleywag himself." References External links Gawker.com: Valleywag Profile of Valleywag and Nick Douglas in BusinessWeek Gawker Media American blogs Gossip