HN users can be incredibly incredibly petty at times, which I think you are referring to. I think the software itself is just too easy to abuse and the moderation is too inscrutable, even if I appreciate dang.

I really dislike how political/personal everything gets around here, even the tech discussions, and the tech discussions themselves are full of breathless hype and hot takes that don't really make sense, too many people that learned something last week and then rave about how x and y changed their life. I don't know what early Slashdot was like, though, how it compared.