in the mainstream subreddits, yes. But in the more niche ones, the discourse is civil if not heartwarming (I frequent the bicycling subreddit, personally)

Sure, I just meant within the same 99% that minimaxir was talking about regarding the adverts. (I've found plenty of friendly people in sports, gay and classical music sub-reddits myself.)

Reddit ads are pinned to the top of the page but allow comments. HN ads float with the rest of the links, but don't allow comments.

Either has their pluses and minuses.

In HN they don't float. They go down slowly in a deterministic way. (Perhaps the details of the algoritm have changed a little.) From http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#12may11 :

> Now instead of being ranked by points, jobs simply start at position 4 and slide down the page at 4 positions per hour.

And HN is a place where short articles and comments lacking depth are not only expected, but wanted by the majority.

Is that so? I personally go to HN for the comments, mostly. The articles themselves are just fuel for discussion, as I see it. Then again, I only use the daemonology Hacker News Daily as well, so I'm hardly seeing all of it.