I personally think this thread is full of great discussion. There is certainly a certain character of pedantry on Hacker News, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in terms of feedback. Compared to a lot of other forums, Hacker News gives a lot of good feedback, and the stories on it have been very helpful to me.

Just my take. I personally don't care about karma on this thing. However, I must admit that I cared a little more when it was displayed! Public reputations seem to do wonders for keeping people well-behaved.