Honestly, HN is still badly suited to long-form discussions, because it’s generally limited to a few hours, and due to the lack of read/unread status. You can’t rely on participants to follow a thread for days/weeks/months/years as you can on web forums and mailing lists.
I agree that HN is not the best for long-form discussions. However, I'd say that content on HN is not as short-lived as a tweet thanks to the features I talked about. I think that's part of why it feels specials compared to Twitter/Facebook for example.
