It's interesting to me that almost everyone here is using a pseudonym yet discussion in Hacker News tends to be civil, constructive and informative. The issue

It's interesting to me that almost everyone here is using a pseudonym yet discussion in Hacker News tends to be civil, constructive and informative. The issue clearly isn't anonymity. Hacker News does several things to weed out the trolls. First, user names are unique (which causes many to pick out a pseudonym even if they don't want to), allowing comments to be tracked by identity. Second, HN uses a reputation score to downgrade habitually unconstructive commenters. As a result, people who would be rude on slashdot are more restrained here because the culture doesn't reward name-calling or opposition without reason. Facebook achieves the same end by allowing its users to limit what they see and from whom and not really caring much what they call themselves unless they offend for another reason. Google has the same mechanism but has chosen to concentrate on the least important aspect of social networking - the names people use - forgetting the most important aspects: fostering a culture of civility and allowing users to control what they see.