The complaints about "SJWs", while indelicately phrased, aren't completely off-base. Hacker News has gotten way more PC over the past 5 years, much to its detriment. I remember what the site was like before the big reddit influx in 2010, and the actual political center wasn't that different, but the quality of discussion was a lot higher. People were forthright, analytical, and thorough. Conversation wasn't so prone to being dominated by groupthink, memes, and keeping up appearances.

Some of this doesn't come from HN itself but from the overall tech culture. But I think a big part of the story is that the site saw a massive expansion in users, thus becoming more generic and "public", meaning people have to be a bit more reflexive about what they say on here. When your audience is a trusted community of people with a shared understanding of the rights and protections that discussion participants grant to one another, you can cut through the bullshit a lot easier.