Consider the possibility that what you perceive as "a troll saying intentionally awful things dressed up as polite language" may be a person who sincerely disagrees with you, and is also being polite about it. That seems to be the highest form of ideas interacting, no?
I was a bit unfocused, but I meant my comment to suggest that what you perceive as this community having a number of "loud trolls" may be overblown. I have been on HN for many years and the number of times I've seen a comment I considered intentionally hurtful (dressed up or otherwise) is vanishingly small.
To put it another way: you say that people who are merely politely disagreeing are in your category 1, but you also believe there is a problem on HN with "loud trolls" dressing up their comments to appear civil. That's counter to my experience here. YMMV etc of course.
I have considered this before even making the post. (I also have considerable experience with these biases because i have for years run a community with thousands of users visiting each day.) I could point out examples, but i don't think that would be productive.
Right now i'm thinking that your bias in perception is that you tend to look mostly at technical topics where there is no opportunity for this kind of rift without going obviously off-topic. (What your perception of HN is is highly determined by which comment threads you look at.)
This is a very good point. I saw almost zero troll comments over a few years but realized afyer your comment that I look only at technical or non controversial topics
