This forum also has an educated crowd of nerds at the heart of its community. Twitter used to have that too and was a much more civil but also less interesting space when I joined in 2008.
Are you the davidw from reddit? Do you ever go on /r/portland? It's moderated to the max yet its still neither civil or engaging. Moderation matters but I think HN does a lot better due to the features that promote well thought out posts and don't really allow trolls to get much traction.
The moderation on HN helps retain civil community members as well. I've been thinking about moderation as a chicken-or-egg situation but maybe it's more of an equilibrium issue. I should go over my old slashdot comments and see if I remember what pushed me out.
