HN comments, by and large, are extremely polite, and people are open to discussion, criticism, etc without resorting to insults, in my experience. I don't really see the sort of complaints brought up in the post here, well, ever, outside of the rare ghostly, semi-transparent comments that have already been flagged or filtered.<p>You don't have to spend long on Reddit, Youtube or Facebook to really appreciate just how nice and non-combative it is here. Maybe it is just the relative difference from those sites' comment sections that blind me to how many assholes are regularly posting on HN, but I really don't see them.<p>Admittedly, as another comment pointed out, the further it gets away from tech, the less informed the comments tend to be (the recent thread about mystical experiences and psychedelics had the level of rhetoric and nuance I'd expect from a teenage Reddit capital-A Atheist on the subject, for example). But that's fine, it's not where I come here for.