HN's moderation does tend to kick in, though not immediately. And on topics in which there is specific expertise comments can be gold.
I'm not suggesting that happens all the time, or even most of it. But relative to other online discussions it does quite well.
The next step up would probably require limited access and verified qualifications. Or something along the lines of StackExchange (which does, yes, have its own problems).
> The next step up would probably require limited access and verified qualifications.
I am half expecting someone to come up and say it goes against their freedom of speech. No, but I like StackExchange, it provides helpful information many a times. How many times have I visited HN if I wanted to know something versus how many times [...] StackExchange. There's definitely value there even for those not participating, but it takes away the back-and-forth of a discussion.
Even people who don't have the qualifications on paper but who have done sufficient research can add good content.
The problem is people disparage and speak in a condescending way under the pretext of facts, which makes it look legitimate, but there's racism and bigotry hiding underneath. I think people need to be more selective and careful with their usage of words if they want to maintain a scientific decorum, and not politicize matters.
One trope I've been mulling over for a while is that of the "marketplace of ideas", which is literally baked into US jurisprudence.
So far as I've been able to trace the origins, it's actually an adaptation of free-market ideology and promotion, and was likely suggested to Oliver Wendell Holmes by Francis Wrigley Hirst, former editor of The Economist, a publication literally founded to promote free-market ideals.[1][2]
But ... is a marketplace really the forum in which ideas are best formed and developed? Or even transmitted? Because ... my understanding is that this takes place far more often in studies, libraries, workshops, laboratories, and academies. Usually amongst a small set of people qualified in the task they are undertaking. Yes, there's often correspondence amongst that group, and there may be distributed work or teams. But one thing it distinctly is not is the absolute hubbub and all-comers-invited nature of the marketplace.
I've yet to see a full critique of the notion, though Jill Gordon's "John Stuart Mill and 'The Marketplace of Ideas'" comes quite close. Among other points, she makes clear that Mill never actually used the phrase, and had some sharp concerns with what are now key elements of it.
Ultimately, markets reward characteristics which are strongly at odds with information in various ways. This appears both in how markets for information goods are tremendously skewed and have enormous deadweight losses (actively impeding access to information to virtually all), but also in what types of information are promoted and advantaged by marketplaces --- rarely that which has a strong truth valance, or which stands against orthodoxies.
(Markets aren't the only structures which stand against information, but given that they're often portrayed as the essence of informational genesis, the conflict is highly notable.)
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Notes:
1. Holmes didn't quite coin the modern form, but came quite close and strongly influenced the ultimate formulation. The Hirst connection is revealed in Thomas Healy's book The Great Dissent: <https://www.alumni.columbia.edu/content/great-dissent-how-ol...>
2. See The Economist's Prospectus: "[A] weekly paper, to be published every Saturday, and to be called THE ECONOMIST, which will contain— First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day" <https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus>
Just look at the kind of baseless and denigrating comments people spew around. What more proof do you need.