To me a few things:

- dang’s moderation and example

- no images

- no intentional sub-cultures

- smaller audience

- topical

- charmingly ugly

- a generally invested community that appreciates this is a special outcome

The interesting thing to me is that Slashdot shares many of these attributes, has a relatively sophisticated moderation feature and is a cesspool. It feels like a ship adrift in the Caribbean and the fourth generation of rats born on the vessel are at war.

The primary difference IMHO is dang. Anytime I think about the overall quality of HN, his efforts bubble to the surface of my mind as the primary causal factor.

The people who make Slashdot a cesspool probably pushed the reasonable ones out, and the refuge for these is HN. The same could probably happen here at some point, but people who want a civil forum could simply move elsewhere if that happens.

It helps that something like HN can be easily duplicated, so there will probably always be a space like HN where interesting and civil discussions happen.

> The primary difference IMHO is dang.

I certainly agree that dang's moderation is excellent and contributes to the uniqueness of HN. But "+5 Funny" on Slashdot was a big driver in the other direction, rewarding the endless hot grits and Cowboy Neal humour, which usually drowned out more sophisticated comments.

Totally agree. I think the intent was to let people focus on the types of comment they want, but it just ended up gamifying moderation.

Which reminds me of another HN feature that I think is material to its ability to sustain its culture:

- Private vote counts

> No profit motive?

There are profit motives and Y Combinator is being transparent on this. From the FAQ [1]:

> Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at jobs.

>

> What's the relationship between YC and HN?

> Y Combinator owns and funds HN. The HN team is editorially independent.

> HN gives three features to YC: job ads (see above) and startup launches get placed on the front page, and YC founder names are displayed to other YC alumni in orange.

But HN seems incentivized to keep the level of quality high and to not interfere too much with content beyond moderation, or people would leave. So it leaves us with good quality contents and discussions.

HN's incentives are well-aligned with serving its users best, and this is probably partly what makes it a good place.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Moderation, but also a community that is by and large more intelligent than the general pop. Add to that a set of common reference points grounded in tech. We almost al understand logic, math, have good language skills and tertiary education. This perhaps makes HN a little bit of an echo chamber in some respects but it also means there is space for well presented arguments that go against the grain.

It's pretty obviously moderation. And the fact is: moderation hurts the bottom line.

r/programming is pretty good in my personal opinion.

Also, niche tech subreddits tend to have great sources of information, even if some tend to become echo chambers over time.

I do think this website is still small enough to have decent moderation, but there are plenty of borderline toxic and/or trolling comments I've seen here that go unmoderated. I've also seen tons of blatant and dangerous misinformation posted in the comments section, you only have to look at the vaccine threads from last week to see that. Nothing is perfect anywhere and medical misinformation is really bad for everyone. Maybe we can blame Facebook for bleeding out into the rest of the internet and turning things toxic, but we still have to deal with the effects of it.