Try pre 2000. Nearly every website was made by an enthusiast of some type. Banner ads just barely existed, and you could reach out and talk to almost anyone who was online. There was also an assumption of politeness and civility.
Totally unknown people randomly met on IRC in 1994/1995 would send you CDs of their own music, strangers from other countries would invite you to come and stay a couple weeks at their place (that existed again for a while at the beginning of Couchsurfing), etc.
The level of trust and friendliness was incredible: There was maybe 0.1% of the population online and we were in awe of this new world.
I find that HN roughly equates to that 0.1%, and there are definitely some other high quality corners of the internet where enthusiasts of whatever topic can have excellent discussions, but it's tough to find them among the ever-increasing noise.
Now that roughly everyone is online to some extent, what's the next frontier -- what can provide that sort of hidden community? I don't know that "power user" or "computer nerd" will ever be the means of gatekeeping that it once was, so what's next?
lol teenaged me on IRC did not get that memo.
I think one difference was that you could hide a little friendly community fairly easy and because the meanness and abuse was seen as an expression of real world powerlessness rather than an enforcement of real world power structures.
That was the year I recall netnews turning into something resembling an open sewer. By 1999, I had dropped off netnews completely. It had gone from a wonderful community of spaces for almost any topic imaginable, to a constant stream of trolling and porn.