[DanBC]

> My belief is that there's a grey zone where considered discussion of the pros and cons is okay, even good.

Considered discussion is welcome on HN. Unfortunately there are some topics where considered discussion is unlikely. Abortion; circumcision; Israel / Palestine; gun control; etc etc. It'd be fantastic if there was a site like HN where these topics could be discussed, especially if that site fostered calm rational discussion.

But these discussions too often deteriorate into noise, and worse into wider ranging down-voting and derailments in other threads.

[foobarbazqux]

Well there's lesswrong I suppose, although I'm not a member. I strongly believe that if PG changed the policy from upvote agreement, downvote disagreement to upvote civility, downvote incivility, the quality of discussions would improve. For example, I was not particularly civil in the comment that started this sub-thread, but nevertheless I got 42 upvotes.