Sadly accurate. And unfortunately the tone here has been getting nastier.  There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like I'm on reddit."<p>Nastiness is a problem intrinsic to forums.  But I'm optimistic that it's solvable.  So few things have been tried so far.  Plus I think a lot of users here would be happy to try out (or at least put up with) design changes intended to increase civility, because that's why a lot of them came here in the first place.  So this is going to be my main focus for improving HN in 2010.