It seems to me that current HN is understood as a juxtaposition to Reddit, both in post quality and commenting civility. At least, that's what I try to support with my commenting and voting.
The way I see it. It's not that the HN crowd don't appreciate humour and memes, it's that they don't want HN to descend into a forum where every second comment is a reflexive wise-crack and/or meme-vehicle. So that type of behaviour is actively policed against and newcomers think HNers are a dour bunch of so-and-so's. Not so!
If I want to chuckle for a while I'll head over to Reddit.
If I want to see what can happen to a forum when the intelligentsia leave I'll head over to /. for a while.
To remind myself of how bad things can get if we allow the lunatics take over the asylum I'll read the comments in YouTube while I watch a video.
Though not a news site, comparable sites to HN in terms of comment quality are TheRegister and ArsTechnica though you'll rarely get the level of detail in comments that one does on HN - the reason being (to go back to the point I made at the start of this comment) is that one does not fear that one's voice will be drowned out by dross.
The main improvement HN has over Ars for me is simply threaded replies. It's been relatively old fashioned for a long time now, but it makes a huge difference for having actual conversations.
Although I must say, the technical content on Ars has slipped a bit in the last few years. The science content is still OK though. Hopefully that's not just a reflection of my relative ignorance.
