Intense levels of plausibly-deniable passive aggression, and absolutely god-awful intent being treated as something better to the detriment of discourse thanks to the "assume positive intent" rule, are what I consider some of the core defining features of the HN experience.

I dunno if it does any good, but these days when I smell ill intent beneath the surface of a "just asking questions" post I just flag the bastards rather than trying to help them by answering. Responding is simply feeding trolls, and HN threads are full of that sort of thing. Argumentative jerks who are just trying to argue, while staying just civil enough that they don't get slapped down (not too quickly, anyway).

My kingdom for sigs and blocklists.