Hacker News Guidelines

Interesting how having intellectual curiosity as the goal, rather than the ubiquitous 'an inclusive space where everyone can feel safe', has ended up in a forum that's much 'safer' and less toxic than most places on the Internet.

HN is only safe and nontoxic when the subject is something the commenters are insulated from.

Even then it only appears so to those commenters, any thread talking about healthcare, legal rights etc etc has the same festering underbelly of hatred you'll find on any comment section from a newspaper.

The major reason you can have this perspective is that a lot of these contentious subjects are blanket banned, the inevitable firestorm in the comments can't happen if the thread isn't allowed.

Precisely. HN's posters aren't any more sophisticated than other forums. It's simply that polarizing topics like current affairs and politics are essentially banned here. Because other forums do not ban them, they have to have rules about not abusing other members, doxxing etc.

The commentariat's genteel reputation also evaporates once you step into the "political" threads HN does allow, namely immigration, outsourcing and of course, crime in San Francisco.

A former head of state in Ycombinator's home country is headed to trial, and a coup plotter in the world's current largest military conflict is apparently dead. Both of these are historic events, but you'd never know that on HN.