Thought of this after watching a recent frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/
One interesting thing that the creator of Second Life said: when discussions happen in a virtual work they are much more like real interactions. So if all HN discussions moved to 2nd life, that would help solve some of the issues with trolling, etc. This then begs the question: would other less drastic measures like avatars help?