The reason HN works (well one reason) is vigorous moderation and a stamping out of any mode of discourse apart from collegial intellectual discussion. As a result, we don't see memes or most of the other cheap humour you will find on e.g Reddit. It also seems to lead inevitably to people whining about downvotes, and to people whining about people whining about downvotes.

HN is basically ideal for analytical, logic bound folks, and it works because the topics tends to be things that we can reason about and evaluate using logic.

HN would not work if the topics were more general. Anything political for example seems to hardly lend itself to logical discussion. It's impossible to imagine a @dang enforcing civilised discourse on political discussions.

HN sometimes has good political discussions - not as often as one would hope, but more often than (I suspect) just about anywhere else.

The rest of the time, yes, the political discussion turns into a steaming garbage pile, and deng has to kill it.