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Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discu

Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discussion from the article, and they're often hard to follow. There's no reason to leave a comment saying "great post!". It's spam. It's unnecessary. Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it's my blog. It's not a discussion board. I inherently have the advantage, I control the conversation, and it's all about me. I have the ability to delete comments I disagree with. That's not discourse, that's an echo chamber. I completely agree with Medium. Just because blog posts have historically had comments doesn't mean it's the right choice. The minute people accepted "pingbacks" as a valid form of comment was the moment comments died. V!AGR@ and P3N15 type spam sealed the deal.

arkitaip 9y ago
Blogs belonging to software tend to be very valuable. People will share insights or tips long after the blog post has been written, often extending the shelf life of the code or software.
vilmosi 9y ago
> Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. But that's practically what HN is, yet I like to believe it's a good platform without too much spam or trolls.
- rattray 9y ago
  That makes me curious as to the mechanisms hn employs to combat spam. I've never seen a comment I've been able to tell was spam, which is impressive.
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    Visit your HN profile then set "showdead" to "yes" to see some of such comments.
    - jwdunne 9y ago
      I also recommend a visit to the new submissions section. There's a lot more there too.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      There's some stuff that shows up there, but surprisingly little. I've been browsing "showdead" for quite some time. My main complaint is that there's no obvious way to tell if an account has been shadowbanned or not. I'll report questionable instances to hn (via email), and on something like 3/4 of cases, the account has been, though it's not clealry evident. I'll vouch for some flagged items. Flag others. Generally I think the comment ranking is pretty good. There's a tendency for somewhat fluffy comments to be excessively highly rated, but as compared to other systems (say, Reddit), HN compares favourably. There's also a slight tendency for the hivemind to punish critical, but valid, comments. But again, compared to most other systems I've seen, not particularly, and the situation often evens out.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    There's a lot of self-policing here. If a comment or submission is obvious spam, I am very quick to flag it (as are many others, apparently).
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    It's heavily stepped up lately, folks are just good at policing it. I have dead posts turned on and I usually see at least 2-3 "work from home" scam comments per article.
  - Tehnix 9y ago
    If you have showdead on, lately has been awful with comments about “I make $$$ from home” or some shit. I regularly read dead comments, because HN has a tendency to downvote even valid comments from time to time, but lately has been rough -.-
- vacri 9y ago
  HN has several moderators. If you're willing to add eyeballs, any system can work.
skewart 9y ago
I disagree. There are lots of different kinds of "comments" on blogs. I agree that pingbacks and one word reactions are awful. However, comments that are a few sentences, or a few of paragraphs, of good thoughts are fantastic. Often people can provide additional info on a topic, or they don't have a blog themselves but want to contribute to the conversation. Besides, as a sibling pointed out, HN comments are basically off-site blog comments, and I think a lot of HN readers enjoy them. I'm sure moderating comments is hard. But when it's done well comments are great.
coldtea 9y ago
>Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it's my blog. It's not a discussion board. That's, like, your opinion, man. I personally enjoy engaging in discussions on blogs and on my (now defunct) old personal blog, and have seen great exchanges (Just see Lambda the Ultimate for an example). Sure, also bad ones, that's just life. Articles and posts can also be as bad, if not worse, than comments.

arkitaip 9y ago

Blogs belonging to software tend to be very valuable. People will share insights or tips long after the blog post has been written, often extending the shelf life of the code or software.

vilmosi 9y ago

> Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. But that's practically what HN is, yet I like to believe it's a good platform without too much spam or trolls.

rattray 9y ago
That makes me curious as to the mechanisms hn employs to combat spam. I've never seen a comment I've been able to tell was spam, which is impressive.
- sah2ed 9y ago
  Visit your HN profile then set "showdead" to "yes" to see some of such comments.
  - jwdunne 9y ago
    I also recommend a visit to the new submissions section. There's a lot more there too.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    There's some stuff that shows up there, but surprisingly little. I've been browsing "showdead" for quite some time. My main complaint is that there's no obvious way to tell if an account has been shadowbanned or not. I'll report questionable instances to hn (via email), and on something like 3/4 of cases, the account has been, though it's not clealry evident. I'll vouch for some flagged items. Flag others. Generally I think the comment ranking is pretty good. There's a tendency for somewhat fluffy comments to be excessively highly rated, but as compared to other systems (say, Reddit), HN compares favourably. There's also a slight tendency for the hivemind to punish critical, but valid, comments. But again, compared to most other systems I've seen, not particularly, and the situation often evens out.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  There's a lot of self-policing here. If a comment or submission is obvious spam, I am very quick to flag it (as are many others, apparently).
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  It's heavily stepped up lately, folks are just good at policing it. I have dead posts turned on and I usually see at least 2-3 "work from home" scam comments per article.
- Tehnix 9y ago
  If you have showdead on, lately has been awful with comments about “I make $$$ from home” or some shit. I regularly read dead comments, because HN has a tendency to downvote even valid comments from time to time, but lately has been rough -.-
vacri 9y ago
HN has several moderators. If you're willing to add eyeballs, any system can work.

skewart 9y ago

I disagree. There are lots of different kinds of "comments" on blogs. I agree that pingbacks and one word reactions are awful. However, comments that are a few sentences, or a few of paragraphs, of good thoughts are fantastic. Often people can provide additional info on a topic, or they don't have a blog themselves but want to contribute to the conversation. Besides, as a sibling pointed out, HN comments are basically off-site blog comments, and I think a lot of HN readers enjoy them. I'm sure moderating comments is hard. But when it's done well comments are great.

coldtea 9y ago

>Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it's my blog. It's not a discussion board. That's, like, your opinion, man. I personally enjoy engaging in discussions on blogs and on my (now defunct) old personal blog, and have seen great exchanges (Just see Lambda the Ultimate for an example). Sure, also bad ones, that's just life. Articles and posts can also be as bad, if not worse, than comments.