4 ms·

[off topic] but this is why we should go back to be seeing karma points. The only reason why his exceptional comment stood out was the length. It is hard to re

by jayzee 16y ago

[off topic] but this is why we should go back to be seeing karma points. The only reason why his exceptional comment stood out was the length. It is hard to read every comment on every post. But some people post valid interesting links and quick comments and I am sure I am missing them because I can't zero in on them w/o seeing the upvotes

scott_s 16y ago
And it's the top post, and will likely remain so.
jayzee 16y ago
Its funny. PG likes conciseness. But the only way you can get heard on HN these days is by being verbose.
- scott_s 16y ago
  "Verbose" is not the same as "long." It means using many words when a few will do. Grellas's posts are long, but they are not verbose. Their length comes from the fact that they thoroughly cover subtle concepts. They have remarkable clarity, which is the opposite of being verbose.
tokenadult 16y ago
Anyone who reads HN regularly soon learns to recognize grellas's username as a mark of a good-quality post on legal issues. (I write this as a a lawyer who is not currently in active legal practice. I learn things from his posts, and he helps me reexperience some of the intellectual excitement I had when I was first studying law.)
gruseom 16y ago
this is why we should go back to be seeing karma points A lot of the super-upvoted comments aren't any better. Many get upvoted because they repeat some conventional view. I find these get in the way more than obviously bad ones do. They're more work to filter out. I noticed I'm relying more on user names as a proxy for how good the comment probably is. It's lossy (a good comment can come from an unexpected place) but not that lossy (humans are relatively consistent), and it's fast. I wonder if the software could support this way of using the site. The obvious ways of doing so would unfortunately fragment the community.

4 ms·

[off topic] but this is why we should go back to be seeing karma points. The only reason why his exceptional comment stood out was the length. It is hard to re

by jayzee 16y ago

scott_s 16y ago
And it's the top post, and will likely remain so.
jayzee 16y ago
Its funny. PG likes conciseness. But the only way you can get heard on HN these days is by being verbose.
- scott_s 16y ago
  "Verbose" is not the same as "long." It means using many words when a few will do. Grellas's posts are long, but they are not verbose. Their length comes from the fact that they thoroughly cover subtle concepts. They have remarkable clarity, which is the opposite of being verbose.
tokenadult 16y ago
Anyone who reads HN regularly soon learns to recognize grellas's username as a mark of a good-quality post on legal issues. (I write this as a a lawyer who is not currently in active legal practice. I learn things from his posts, and he helps me reexperience some of the intellectual excitement I had when I was first studying law.)
gruseom 16y ago
this is why we should go back to be seeing karma points A lot of the super-upvoted comments aren't any better. Many get upvoted because they repeat some conventional view. I find these get in the way more than obviously bad ones do. They're more work to filter out. I noticed I'm relying more on user names as a proxy for how good the comment probably is. It's lossy (a good comment can come from an unexpected place) but not that lossy (humans are relatively consistent), and it's fast. I wonder if the software could support this way of using the site. The obvious ways of doing so would unfortunately fragment the community.