That's a shame, and also a quite lazy form of prejudice.
Yes, 4chan and it's analogues are full of worthless shit and the quality has gone to the drain, but they are also full of different & unique people, some of whom share similar ideas that those of the HN community (privacy, anti-mainstream, anti-corpo, etc; but you can also find the polar opposites in either).
It has in the past also acted as one of the few places with freedom of speech (is there anywhere left in the world now? I doubt it. People with that specific "absolute disgust" frame of mind have made them all disappear: "Let's stereotype a whole community based on a vocal negative minority").
It's also a place not only full of internet history, but also responsible for a big part of it.
In fact, there is no doubt you have enjoyed content, trends, breaking news, memes, etc. that were originally created/generated at 4chan. All other forums/communities have and will continue to pick up content from 4chan & others. Not only lazy, but also kinda hypocrite.
I guess that's the whole point of having these different communities. People quick to judge better stay at the mainstream, where everything is Safe. What you get is something like Reddit, which is now (just like 4chan) completely distorted from its original form and fully bought out, and you have admins (the CEO itself...) changing user's post on a personal grudge. Bravo.
If you want free speech go yell about UFOs and gays on the public square where it's protected. Free speech doesn't mean people have to give you a platform. Your version of free speech would actually coerce other people into using their resources to propagate your speech, which doesn't sound free to me.
Arguing 4chan is a positive valuable place because they are good at making memes and organizing raids and harassment campaigns is also pretty funny.
Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN, regardless of how bad someone else's comment was, and will get your account banned on HN, so please don't do that.
"chan" is simply short for "channel" and is left over from nomenclature used by the original Japanese imageboard users. Nothing nefarious, just a way to identify the site as an imageboard the same way "XyzBlog" would be identified as a blog. It is up to the moderates\users to control the content.
It appears to be a specific style of image board, inspired by the anonymous nature of 2ch. Do you know of any 'channel' style image board that doesn't offer user anonymity?
I thought I'd made myself clear in the original comment, but I'll try again: the issue with these sites is not the "channel"/imageboard format itself, it produces great results at a certain population size. The issue is lax moderation and the greater proportion of highly active bad actors when the site reaches a certain critical mass of users. To generalize your experiences on large, less niche sites like 4chan is to miss out on some of the smaller gems out there that share the imageboard format.
Lainchan is almost HN-esque. It's a cyberpunk board (sort of), and the moderation is a lot weaker, but there's an emphasis on constructive discussion which is refreshing.
