I have ran into the poor attitude on SO occasionally and it is definitely great to try to improve. That being said, SO has been such a useful tool for me in my career, I would be care when making changes that they didn't have the unintended consequence of hurting the quality of the product. I think it's similar to HN. HN downvoting can be really frustrating when I am making what I believe to be very good comments but I have to admit that overall I am happy with the product. I have been trained over the years to think a lot more about comments I leave in HN than I did in my early years here.