I think I see where you're coming from. Humans aren't always rational.
I have a different view. I think the quality of a subset of comments here are appreciably better in some respects than many of the sites you listed. Of course there are contrarian, misinformed pseudointellects, but at the same time, one also gets to hear the unvarnished thoughts of lead developers of specific products (e.g. Timescale, Azure services, D programming language, etc.). I know of no other forum where this is true.
Maybe my mind is used to filtering out stuff I don't care about, so most of the cruft and negativity doesn't really bother me. I also come from an academic tradition where debate and disagreement (high quality or not) is just part of life. To me, it's just a reflection of the world out there -- all forums have their brand of stupidity. HN's just a different kind of stupid from Reddit, and I'm ok with all kinds of stupid as long as there are still good bits that edify me, which is why I keep coming back.
Site(s) like StackOverflow and certain StackExchanges have higher quality exchanges on particular topics, but they aren't designed for discussion. They are heavily constrained Q&A sites. The bar of acceptability is much higher (questions get closed all the time), but the topics also more or less have verifiable answers, which makes it easy to achieve "quality"; this is not true of a general purpose discussion forum. Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow's founder) was interviewed on the MIT AI podcast recently about this, and his answers on how to arrive at high quality online communities were insightful.
Finally, and this is my opinion, the way to counter incorrect and unhelpful discussions isn't to withdraw but to redirect the discussion in more helpful directions by providing correct information and a counterargument. HN is just the aggregate of people who visit it -- the same people have to self-govern it to some extent.
The problem with this attitude is that it's, in a word, superior. Superior attitudes are rarely productive.
I dislike very strongly those communities who encourage their members to put themselves above others, and I see that as more harmful than any inherent value the community might provide.
If HN were really superior, people wouldn't have to keep telling me it's so, yet that's all I am told when this topic comes up. Why isn't it self-evident?
A large portion of my time on HN (nearly 10 years, blame XKCD) has been devoted to this topic specifically, and no one has yet shown me the merits of this site to a degree that it outweighs the arrogance its members have shown over and over.
I've very recently started writing my thoughts out more long form, maybe I'll dedicate a post to this topic. Otherwise, I am probably done talking about it, as dang tends to get upset with me when I go on like this.
I'm not sure I agree, but I too will stop here too except to say that this whole exchange is a bit meta in that it seems to reflect the content and attitudes it is opposing. (I'm not excluding myself from this--I'm equally culpable)
I have a different view. I think the quality of a subset of comments here are appreciably better in some respects than many of the sites you listed. Of course there are contrarian, misinformed pseudointellects, but at the same time, one also gets to hear the unvarnished thoughts of lead developers of specific products (e.g. Timescale, Azure services, D programming language, etc.). I know of no other forum where this is true.
Maybe my mind is used to filtering out stuff I don't care about, so most of the cruft and negativity doesn't really bother me. I also come from an academic tradition where debate and disagreement (high quality or not) is just part of life. To me, it's just a reflection of the world out there -- all forums have their brand of stupidity. HN's just a different kind of stupid from Reddit, and I'm ok with all kinds of stupid as long as there are still good bits that edify me, which is why I keep coming back.
Site(s) like StackOverflow and certain StackExchanges have higher quality exchanges on particular topics, but they aren't designed for discussion. They are heavily constrained Q&A sites. The bar of acceptability is much higher (questions get closed all the time), but the topics also more or less have verifiable answers, which makes it easy to achieve "quality"; this is not true of a general purpose discussion forum. Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow's founder) was interviewed on the MIT AI podcast recently about this, and his answers on how to arrive at high quality online communities were insightful.
Finally, and this is my opinion, the way to counter incorrect and unhelpful discussions isn't to withdraw but to redirect the discussion in more helpful directions by providing correct information and a counterargument. HN is just the aggregate of people who visit it -- the same people have to self-govern it to some extent.