Of course, the community is no more immune than any other regarding group think or rough edges. But on the whole, I've found the level of discourse to impressively high quality over time, and I've been posting and reading here on one account or another for over a decade. It's not just the level of discourse that is impressive, but its prolonged longevity. I think it can only have occurred from a very thoughtful approach to moderation; something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated forums such as Reddit and Twitter, where I can find the interesting content in the discourse, but laden with significantly more noise and significantly less thoughtfulness.
Thanks dang!
My experience is that HN users “moderate” each other, when appropriate, to some degree. I’ve told others they’re over the line and I’ve been told myself, in a respectful manner. This tends to suppress fires early before they become flame wars.
So I think while dang does excellent work, the fact that it’s transparent and most respect that, people voluntarily self-align and help out. Otoh, in places where mods are assholes or automated, people don’t care about the spirit of the rules at all.
for example I find the requests for proofs quite funny over here. it's never "source?", there's always a couple of words added to them to adjust the tone. most of the time there's no answer, but sometimes there's is a delightful come back with well researched sources, demonstrating the champion was well prepared and the challenger had been trapped :)