The commentary here has generally been much better then the communities at Engadget, Gizmodo, Reddit and such, though it has seemed to dip a bit towards their direction at times.
Oh god, don't get me started on Engadget comments. I can't speak for Gizmodo, but the Engadget commenters are awful. I so often want to contribute a rational thought to a post, but get turned off by the comments I read there.
I've always heard that Reddit is better than Digg, but I guess that's a seriously low bar to set...
But yes, I've always considered the empeg boards to be a sanctuary, and still do.