I'm sorry but this just doesn't ring true to me. HN is not a uniquely civilized forum, all same rules apply (are you really telling me people aren't trying to look smart around here?), the only difference is that PG founded it based on a set of principles carefully considered to combat the slashdot / digg / reddit culture as the site grew and seeded it with his fan base who naturally appreciate good conversation by definition given PGs essay style.

The problems facing HN today are not due to a few bad apples, to the contrary I think it's pretty clearly a function of size and there may be nothing to do about that short of pulling a Metafilter and charging for new accounts (something which brings its own form of elitism, but may be better than the alternatives).

HN has been often been likened to a mob, but that's not a good analogy either, because I believe 95% of HN is always in full-on critical thinking mode which is the opposite of mob mentality. It just feels like a mob because of the number of criticisms that you can be pelted with based purely on volume, each individual post tends not to be all that harsh, but the wall of text is overwhelming.