Measuring it would mean first figuring out what was valuable in HN and then tracking that. It may turn out that what was valuable isn't easily measurable, even

Measuring it would mean first figuring out what was valuable in HN and then tracking that. It may turn out that what was valuable isn't easily measurable, even with ML. In a preliminary way, however, it seemed there used to be a stronger correlation between length of comment (as a proxy for thoughtfulness, perhaps crossed with reading level) and comment score. It also seemed there were fewer of the "I know nothing about field X, but let me pontificate on X" comments. Frequency of one-liners has probably increased, in relative terms. We could probably also look at the relative frequency of comments of the type "Thank you for your (specialist) explanation" or "Very interesting!" over time, as a more or less direct proxy for quality. One might also be able to come up with a measure of "feeling of safety." In other words, the crowd probably perceives the level of discourse and guards their contributions accordingly. For example, "How do you measure the decline?," is interpretable as a technical question, or as a rhetorical question with "one" replacing "you," or as a snarky attack (by reading it with a sneering emphasis on "you," to indicate skepticism that a decline has happened), and so on. The general tone of replies might serve as an indicator, especially if crossed with something like days-since-joined-HN or karma. But, really, my original comment was meant to contribute something positive while calling out, en passant, a particularly egregious kind of comment behavior that I am saddened to see on HN, particularly since I perceive a general decline over time. Full(ish) disclosure: I burned down a previous account because I had made a shameful anti-Muslim comment a la Sam Harris, whom I'd been reading (and was inexplicably taken with) at the time. I could no longer edit or remove the comment by the time I'd come to my senses, so opted to irreversibly change the password on that account to gibberish. This is all just to point out that, despite my apparent HN youth, I can indeed seem to remember a time when thoughtful comments that represented either expertise or care elicited far more upvotes than they do now, and a time when short quips and adolescent snark elicited far swifter and more brutal karmic beat-downs.