I think people expect too much from hacker news (or any similar site). Every post isn't going to be scintillating, or every comment insightful. Some of that is

I think people expect too much from hacker news (or any similar site). Every post isn't going to be scintillating, or every comment insightful. Some of that is the posts, but a lot of it is what we bring to reading them -- we are all different, in our desires/tolerances/history. Your "funny" might be my "trivial" or vice-versa. A repost that bores you might be news to me. So, my answer is to mostly just skip conversations that bore/irritate me. I'm not perfect; sometimes I forget and jump in. But little of use seems to come from that. It's more effective to just skip them and look for something else interesting to do.