There are two levels to consider. At the individual post level, conversation needs to be thoughtful, respectful of the other person, and patient when correcting wrong information or responding to bad arguments. If that's what you mean by civility, that's good (we stopped using that word years ago, but that's a separate issue).

At the overall account level, an account needs to be using HN for its intended purpose, which is intellectual curiosity. It's not ok to post primarily on battle topics (like nationalistic ones or ideological ones or partisan ones), because curiosity doesn't work that way. If the primary use of one's energy is for nationalistic or political battle, that pretty much guarantees that curiosity is not part of the mix. I've written extensively about this in the past:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

and about how/why we use this as the litmus test for banning accounts:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

If you take a look at those links and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be interested to know what it is.