I think HN strives to achieve this (as you point out, very high bar) and does a pretty good job with it overall. I do believe that dang's and the moderator teams' light touch has really aided a free-ranging discussion among people of wildly divergent viewpoints, and I for one appreciate this dynamic.

That we're even having such a high-quality discussion now really speaks volumes to the seemingly effortless way in which the HN team has developed into a great place to have such a conversation or debate. To be honest, I do not think that HN is always fair to everyone, but it does seem like the moderators do try to be.

With that said: Twitter and FB have wildly missed the mark.

I think any mildly political topic disproves your point.

Technological discussions mostly stay high quality but any politics(-adjacent) topic turns into an obvious struggle of moderation and quality.

The same goes for Twitter but the balance of topics is heavily skewed towards the latter.

I mostly agree, in fact there are certain topics that I will absolutely ignore and block as experience shows there is no room for intellectual discussion about them on here.

That being said, I do agree with GP on this point:

> To be honest, I do not think that HN is always fair to everyone, but it does seem like the moderators do try to be