It's because realistically hn is an oasis of educated people that has been overlooked by astroturfers and foreign interests (very strongly including the government in this piece), and hasn't expanded its core demographic for profit. This is what the rest of the internet would be like without manipulation. Imagine how much better things would be

HN has an experienced and famously fair moderator for whom cultivating the conversation on this site is a full time job.

I have no doubt whatsoever that dang is the biggest reason that HN comment sections are so high quality compared to the rest of the web.

There is absolutely astroturfing happening on HN but not anywhere near the massive campaigns all over Reddit that are cumulatively probably millions of posts and comments

I was encouraged by yours and parents posts to look at some of the comments but I think I just got duped into wasting time with bots that are in fact astroturfing!

If HN is so educated and civic, we would be able to have more of that sort of debate and not just once in a while.

Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.

It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.

I think people understand there's a time and a place for important political discussion on an otherwise tech community, especially because the quality and insight tends to be better than other places.

I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.

As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.

HN is an oasis of borderline autistic people who have no knowledge or rational opinions about anything more open ended than which JavaScript framework is the worst

This is at t= 3 hours, and large swathes of people asleep on a weekend.

These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.

I don't really see much debate. The top comments and votes are pretty clearly pro-human.