This. I too go back to Usenet and Compuserve. I'm really close to giving up on Slashdot altogether. I've only recently come across HN and love it. Vast majority of discussions are polite, thoughtful, considered and interesting. There are almost zero personal attacks and very few content-free comments. It reminds me SO much of the early days of the net. My greatest fear is that HN too shall fall to the trolls and numbskulls.

Reading this whole thread I'm reminded of something from my childhood that greatly impressed me. My mother emigrated in the sixties from a country which had undergone a communist-fomented civil war in which her father, a policeman, was killed (when she was four). When she arrived here she know no one other than my father. One of her first and greatest friends here was a woman that along with her husband was a card carrying member of the communist party. When I was old enough to understand these things I was pretty stunned that two people who by rights should probably hate each other, could get along and be so friendly. That has stayed with me to this day. We can seek consensus and argue positions and come together or stay in our corners. But the ability to do it without being dicks is very special.