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Thanks for this comment. I tend to flag "every divisive article" myself, and maybe I'll resist that a bit more now. Essentially what I use HN for is the commen

Thanks for this comment. I tend to flag "every divisive article" myself, and maybe I'll resist that a bit more now. Essentially what I use HN for is the comment discussion. So for me, the main thing to look at is whether an article will generate a good discussion. Saying "I don't actually care if the article is good" is not exactly true, but it's also not that far off: a well-written article that generates a bad discussion is still a bad thing IMO. Whereas someone who uses HN as just a news aggregator may have the opposite thought -- the comments don't matter, all that matters is the article quality.

dang 8y ago
I agree—but your comment omits something important, which is that article quality also conditions comment quality. It's a reciprocal loop. To get the most out of it means watching for quality articles that otherwise might fall through the cracks, and it also means coaxing threads to rise to a higher quality level instead of collapsing into default sludge. This submission is a good example to make the point; it sits just on the interesting edge. That's why I've spent so much time commenting in this thread: not because I know anything about the social implications of photography tech, but because it reveals something about how HN can get better.