3 ms·

Half of the comments: low-attention, high-misery demands that an already short summary of an interesting phenomenon be shortened to the minimum number of words

Half of the comments: low-attention, high-misery demands that an already short summary of an interesting phenomenon be shortened to the minimum number of words possible, presented like it's not worthy of arousing your curiosity. The other half: people who didn't read the link providing baseless conjecture. Good stuff. Curiosity bad. 200-comment threads about minor releases of enterprise middleware only.

kjeetgill 7y ago
I gotta say, I agree with you and it looks like they're mostly going to get buried and flagged dead soon. But doesn't this comment just do the same? Like, for a top level comment it is even less about the article.
- jcahill 7y ago
  Replying so negatively to a particular comment when it's meta about the thread in general wouldn't have made much sense. HN's taboo against asking people if they've read the article is also wildly outdated -- its readership is too big and broad for the underlying assumption about tact being discursively superior to directness to hold. So you have to outright tell people they haven't read the article, when it's very apparent that they haven't. It's frustrating.
dang 7y ago
Alas, comments like this one perpetuate the problem you're complaining about, actually in a worse way because second-order phenomena are harder to deal with. For example, low-value dismissals tend to get downvoted and supplanted by better comments. But indignant meta-rants tend to get upvoted and sit at the top of the page, giving off fumes. That's where this one was until I marked it off-topic. Believe me I understand the annoyance of bad comments and shallow dismissals, but trying to fight them this way just makes the threads worse.
- jcahill 7y ago
  Now there's simply another meta comment at the top. When you mark that one off-topic, an irrelevant anecdote about elk that suggests possibly-not-reading-the-article will be on top.
  - dang 7y ago
    That comment does start out with a meta criticism, but then it turns into a much better comment by saying something fun and interesting about the article, which gratifies curiosity in its own right. The one about elk isn't irrelevant: it describes a comparable situation. Better still, it's based in personal experience. Anecdotes are fine—they're the life-blood of good conversation, and HN threads are supposed to be good conversations [1]. We're not doing peer-reviewed replication here. That's perhaps the real problem with the comments you've been posting in this thread: they're bad for conversation because they're bilious. Bile is a bummer. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20conversation%20anecdote&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    - jcahill 7y ago
      I was about to follow up my meta comment with a regular comment about river basin mapping and bird migration viz until your reply about the off-topic flag. Defense of curiosity for its own sake is a preface for conversation. Noting disappointment in people being miserable about something interesting, which in itself totally disinvites on-topic conversation, isn't bile. I can't ask people to read the article per the site rules, even though it's painfully apparent that half the problem is lack of nudging to read the article. So of course dissent is going to be colder than it could otherwise be.
      - dang 7y ago
        > a regular comment about river basin mapping and bird migration viz That sounds great! That's the way to combat bad comments, by posting better ones. I'm sorry if I put you out of the mood for that. Please reconsider?

kjeetgill 7y ago

I gotta say, I agree with you and it looks like they're mostly going to get buried and flagged dead soon. But doesn't this comment just do the same? Like, for a top level comment it is even less about the article.

jcahill 7y ago
Replying so negatively to a particular comment when it's meta about the thread in general wouldn't have made much sense. HN's taboo against asking people if they've read the article is also wildly outdated -- its readership is too big and broad for the underlying assumption about tact being discursively superior to directness to hold. So you have to outright tell people they haven't read the article, when it's very apparent that they haven't. It's frustrating.

dang 7y ago

Alas, comments like this one perpetuate the problem you're complaining about, actually in a worse way because second-order phenomena are harder to deal with. For example, low-value dismissals tend to get downvoted and supplanted by better comments. But indignant meta-rants tend to get upvoted and sit at the top of the page, giving off fumes. That's where this one was until I marked it off-topic. Believe me I understand the annoyance of bad comments and shallow dismissals, but trying to fight them this way just makes the threads worse.

jcahill 7y ago
Now there's simply another meta comment at the top. When you mark that one off-topic, an irrelevant anecdote about elk that suggests possibly-not-reading-the-article will be on top.
- dang 7y ago
  That comment does start out with a meta criticism, but then it turns into a much better comment by saying something fun and interesting about the article, which gratifies curiosity in its own right. The one about elk isn't irrelevant: it describes a comparable situation. Better still, it's based in personal experience. Anecdotes are fine—they're the life-blood of good conversation, and HN threads are supposed to be good conversations [1]. We're not doing peer-reviewed replication here. That's perhaps the real problem with the comments you've been posting in this thread: they're bad for conversation because they're bilious. Bile is a bummer. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20conversation%20anecdote&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - jcahill 7y ago
    I was about to follow up my meta comment with a regular comment about river basin mapping and bird migration viz until your reply about the off-topic flag. Defense of curiosity for its own sake is a preface for conversation. Noting disappointment in people being miserable about something interesting, which in itself totally disinvites on-topic conversation, isn't bile. I can't ask people to read the article per the site rules, even though it's painfully apparent that half the problem is lack of nudging to read the article. So of course dissent is going to be colder than it could otherwise be.
    - dang 7y ago
      > a regular comment about river basin mapping and bird migration viz That sounds great! That's the way to combat bad comments, by posting better ones. I'm sorry if I put you out of the mood for that. Please reconsider?