I was actually just thinking earlier today that HN's great strength is its focus on quality of discourse, and it would be great if it leaned into that even more

I was actually just thinking earlier today that HN's great strength is its focus on quality of discourse, and it would be great if it leaned into that even more. I would love if it were made extremely clear at signup and whenever possible afterward guidelines such as, 1) Comments should be well thought-out, politely written, and supported by facts 2) Down-votes should be used for comments that are uncivil or unproductive; even if you disagree with the point made, a comment has value if a good-faith effort has been made to engage in constructive conversation. These are similar to the existing guidelines—and I'm sure they could be fleshed out and worded better—but I feel the site would really benefit from even more emphasis on points like these. At signup, and then at convenient parts later on—when the user's karma unlocks the downvote capability for instance. There could even be a sort of "self-moderation" triggered by things like excessive down-voting or flagging, where it would remind the user of the guidelines and show them several of their votes, then just ask them to review and make sure they're using the buttons appropriately. Another possibility would be, whenever a user down-votes, require them to choose one of several categories of justification, like with a flag. That would quickly make it clear that the down-vote is for poor comments, rather than ones you personally disagree with. It might even be useful to have a similar—but probably optional—choice for up-votes; one nice options would be something like, "I disagree with this, but it's well argued." That kind of thing would give the ranking algorithms more variables to play with, hopefully improving results over time. Those are just some possibilities, and I'm sure there are many other options including by moderators when necessary. The main thing though would be to make the guidelines very clear. My hope would be that a focus on quality of discourse, rather than on the types of content that are allowed, would allow more controversial topics to be discussed productively, as well as prevent unpopular opinions (when presented productively) from being drowned out. Ideally, the specific "off-topic" subjects could even be removed from the guidelines, since there are intellectually interesting discussions to be had on many different topics. Of course we wouldn't want to be overwhelmed with political topics to the extent that nothing else makes it to the homepage, but if that were to happen perhaps a dedicated subsection could be used, rather than an outright ban. Perhaps that would be preferable regardless, since many HN'ers come here to enjoy stimulating content and discussion outside strongly polarizing topics. Regardless though, I feel the site should double down on its focus on rationality and civility, and take every opportunity to influence new and existing users in that direction.