Call me biased, but pretty much every on-line community I&#x27;ve seen in the past 15 years had no desire to limit disagreements. All they wanted is to get rid of <i>assholes</i>.<p>It&#x27;s the same on HN and on your Facebook feed, as it was on the old topical boards and mailing lists. You can argue for any controversial position you like <i>as long as</i> you do this in a civil and substantial way. What ends up happening is people getting split into two camps - those who can discuss things in a detached way and learn from them, and assholes who just want to call people names. Or, in terms of pg&#x27;s hierarchy of disagreement[0], groups tend to split somewhere around DH3-DH4 level.<p>Which is totally fine, IMO. Unfortunately most Internet denizens seem to be in the &quot;DH3 and below&quot; group. What we need to figure out is how to make them abandon their ways and join the civilized world.<p>[0] - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;disagree.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;disagree.html</a>