Absolutely. Both the quality of submission (it's an aggregator like HN or Reddit) and of discussion are unparalleled in my experience of web communities. Three things possibly related to its success:

- Lack of an upvoting mechanism, which can lead to problems

- Incredibly fair and considered moderation

- MetaTalk, an area of the site where no rules apply, and where arguments/vendettas/in-jokes can carry on out of the way

I think the blurbs help also. Sort of like Slashdot blurbs, but done better. Imo the "headline-only" style of reddit/digg/HN has an unfortunate tendency to promote stuff that's that's easy to summarize in a soundbite, and makes it hard to get attention for anything that needs even 3 sentences to set context for. There's even a word for the extreme case (linkbait), but I think it has more subtle effects throughout as well.

I think there's another factor that is subtle but powerful: comments are forever. You can't edit or even delete your comments. So unless you really screwed up and convince a mod to delete it for you, that comment's going to be up there attached to your handle. At least for me, that makes me much more careful about what I say. Not that I'm in the habit of deleting or second guessing posts after the fact on HN or elsewhere, but the awareness that you're chiseling in stone makes for a different mindset.

The pattern of 'direct discursive activity elsewhere rather than suppress', as exhibited by a secondary less-moderated forum like MetaTalk, is a tactic I believe is underused. It can be used to tuck away the hypercritical/nitpicky subthreads; the jokey subthreads; the meta/rule-debating subthreads; the eternal rathole subthreads; etc. And in so doing gets some value for (and from) the participants who want to go there, while avoiding the sting and signal-loss that comes with complete censure.

Agreed. I'm surprised you didn't mention that it costs a nominal fee ($5 or $10, IIRC) to join. I've always imagined that prevents issues with multiple sock puppets and trolls and whatnot. If a mod deletes your account for abuse, it's not free to spin up a new one.

Also, having a conversation is pretty much impossible if there are a lot of comments, mainly because the comments are linear. If you want to catch replies to your comments, you need to read everything or search for your username (hoping they included it).

I always hoped that Mefi would go threaded, but the current way is clearly the desired mode. It's also the reason I don't really look at the comments on Mefi anymore.

Metafilter comments sections are still very often worth reading, but the lack of threading means the conversation is always moving somewhere, and going back to reply to someone 15 comments up is less likely. The upside to this is that it favors newer comments, unlike reddit/hn, which favor upvoted comments (which are often the oldest).

I prefer linear comments. I have four open tabs with Mefi posts in them right now. Every once in a while I will reload the tabs and I can easily see what was added since the last time I refreshed.

With nested comments I have to go back and dig for new stuff. This is why I read the comments on HN, Reddit, and slashdot exactly once unless I added a comment and want to see if there was a reply.

And I don't comment much.