HN is not civil towards external targets (i.e. bloggers, Microsoft, Zuckerberg, etc), but it is civil in the sense that HN readers are discouraged from attacking each other.

I guess we could learn to not attack the authors or subjects of the articles, but that's not the point. The "civil discussion" rules are there to keep the discussion from degrading into flame wars, not to be nice to bloggers.

Also, not that he uses simple present (HN readers are mean), then only considers one article (his own article about why you should never ever hire a job hopper). Most of the discussions seem fairly civilized to me. I guess you wear a bit of heat if you suggest that a large fraction of your audience isn't worth hiring. The insults weren't pretty, but they aren't typical HN comments.