> respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations wel

> respect for other members, maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought provoking. I agree with these criteria (except "thought provoking"). Mostly I expect to be able to learn something from some of the comments, and I don't want to lose my time with political debates, flame wars and trolls. I think HN works pretty well for that (better than any other forum I know), which is why I stay. I agree it's somewhat insular and US-centric (as expected from an English language forum). It reduces the set of views and some opinions may be hard to express. But overall, I feel it's reasonably balanced, and it's possible to have "non standard HN views" if they fit the guidelines (they may not receive a lot of upvote, but they shouldn't have negative vote count). Besides a lot of the articles are technical so it's usually possible to avoid ideological discussions.