Look on twitter what people think about HN. The general opinion I hear about "the orange site" is that it's a toxic trash fire (this is also my opinion, which I will not be defending here).
Thanks, I'm intrigued that you mention going to another online community to learn what people think of this online community - can you say more about this? are these people HN members?
In a certain sense, everyone in tech is a HN member. It's a community that's much bigger than just the people who post here.