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I thought this was a pretty good essay. Timely as well. There was considerable disagreement over PG's last essay. You could see the hierarchy of responses on

I thought this was a pretty good essay. Timely as well. There was considerable disagreement over PG's last essay. You could see the hierarchy of responses on both sides, including straw man arguments. If comments could be tagged with hierarchy levels, it might raise the general level of argument. "Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional." I totally agree with this, particularly on YC News where there are a lot of smart people. When the words fly, there's a tendency to overreact and say things that wouldn't occur if we were face-to-face. I admit having done this. It would be great if some optional tagging feature were built into a comment system, so writers could get some feedback when others thought they strayed.

PieSquared 19y ago
Hmm... Doesn't Slashdot sort of do this? Not completely, but to some extent, it does have "Flamebait" or "Interesting" or "Insightful" 'ratings' for comments. I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...
- DocSavage 19y ago
  Those kinds of tags are too broad. I was thinking of some javascript to let you highlight subparts of a comment then tag it with a more specific label, like "Straw Man Argument." People would probably view the comment differently, but readers (and the author) could then see 60% of people thought part of his comment wasn't useful. Ad hominem and straw dog attacks, for example, might be unintentionally inserted in the heat of argument. Right now, comment rating is very blocky.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    That's actually a very interesting thought. It might be hard to implement in a graphically pleasing manner though.
  - jimbokun 19y ago
    Startup idea! Make it so you can tag arbitrary pages from within your browser, and other people visiting the page can see the tags if they wish. Imagine the fun of doing this with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, in addition to blogs and discussion forums, etc. etc.

PieSquared 19y ago

Hmm... Doesn't Slashdot sort of do this? Not completely, but to some extent, it does have "Flamebait" or "Interesting" or "Insightful" 'ratings' for comments. I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...

DocSavage 19y ago
Those kinds of tags are too broad. I was thinking of some javascript to let you highlight subparts of a comment then tag it with a more specific label, like "Straw Man Argument." People would probably view the comment differently, but readers (and the author) could then see 60% of people thought part of his comment wasn't useful. Ad hominem and straw dog attacks, for example, might be unintentionally inserted in the heat of argument. Right now, comment rating is very blocky.
- mixmax 19y ago
  That's actually a very interesting thought. It might be hard to implement in a graphically pleasing manner though.
- jimbokun 19y ago
  Startup idea! Make it so you can tag arbitrary pages from within your browser, and other people visiting the page can see the tags if they wish. Imagine the fun of doing this with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, in addition to blogs and discussion forums, etc. etc.