I think the moderators do an excellent job on HN. The signal to noise ratio is pretty high here and while there is snark, there's far less than in most other forums.

One stark difference between HN, Product Hunt, and other maker forums is that HN is a very critical audience. It's even been specifically called out as such by Pieter Levels in his new book, Make.

Snark is against the guidelines, and I can tell you that the moderators find it dreadfully boring, whomever the source. We could use your help if you come across highly-ranked snark to please downvote, flag, or email [email protected]. We don't see everything on the site, but we do read all of those emails.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

s/in-group/in-meme

Apple products are bad now despite having a pretty similar rate of technical glitches they always did

It’s just the changes impact the HN crowd more now so complaining em masse is allowed

It’s meme-tribalism

No one wants to be the one to have to give up on their meme

This is a wonderful subject, memes and group think, I would say everyone feels like they are part of an minority/snowflake community in some of their views. Memes just makes it easier to get that feeling.

So it is not possible to have these discussions without the out-group interpreting your remarks as snarkiness. Handling that is hard, FUD is one way to handle it, compassion another. Social interactions are hard.