As a user who's been around for over a year, I've recently decided to get more active in the commenting community here on HN as I've found it to be incredibly v

As a user who's been around for over a year, I've recently decided to get more active in the commenting community here on HN as I've found it to be incredibly valuable and wanted to make meaningful contributions. I quickly learned that comments based solely on humor tend to fall flat and get downvoted. Also, being overly negative and not offering something productive to the conversation will get you downvoted quickly. Overall I've found the feedback of downvotes to be helpful and it's directly responsible for me raising the caliber of my comments rather than writing the funny responses that I initially think of. I tend now to just write them in the comment box, chuckle to myself, delete them, and then (try to) add something worthwhile to the conversation. Everyone wins!