I don't think HN gets enough credit for this. I've never tried to moderate a public forum, but given how low the standard of discourse is on the Internet in ge

I don't think HN gets enough credit for this. I've never tried to moderate a public forum, but given how low the standard of discourse is on the Internet in general I've always taken it for granted that the house rules and the mods here do a fantastic job of keeping threads on point. I'm taking OP's description of "warm" to mean "not hostile", which I think is true. I've seen people throw out baseless insults on front page threads and you can watch them be buried live in real time over the course of about 15 seconds. It's one thing to have a set of civil house rules for a forum, but the community here is much better at enforcing them than any other I've seen in this space.