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Why do you think the pedantic comments have become so common? There was one post recently about a breakthrough in cancer research. There was an oncologist in th

Why do you think the pedantic comments have become so common? There was one post recently about a breakthrough in cancer research. There was an oncologist in the thread who gave more detail and talked about how exciting the research was, but no one was paying attention to him. All anyone could talk about was whether the headline was or was not misleading. I found myself nodding in agreement at the author's lines: "...most of them just criticized for the sake of criticizing." "They simply hold on to one point and stretch it out, overlooking the fact that the point that they want to make is tangential to the discussion at hand." I couldn't agree more. I have never seen a community where this is so true, nor have I ever understood why.

Semaphor 14y ago
The comments on HN are still better than most on Reddit. There have been discussion over discussions how to prevent the quality decay with a larger number of users (I remember the time before I had an account here when people were saying (paraphrased) "Don't link to HN, the riff raff will come"). As far as I know no one found a solution yet.
- graeham 14y ago
  One option would be non-alias usernames. Youtube seems to think this is the answer to poor-quality comments there, although I can see benefit for some HN posts being anonymous. The world is a tough place and life is too short to get worn down by a few jerks on the internet hiding behind their keyboards. It can be tough to take criticism on work you spend hours writing, and someone writes a nasty comment having spent only minutes or seconds reading it. And even with dozens of good comments, one bad one can make you feel crumby. It is a shame because it discourages people from submitting good content, but I think its best to just ignore bad comments.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > One option would be non-alias usernames. Youtube seems to think this is the answer to poor-quality comments there YouTube also provides an excellent example of the total failure of the "real names improve comments". I strongly agree with the rest of your comment. Some people are jerks. One technique that it useful to ignore jerks is to take just a few moments to help control the thoughts caused. You sit with the unpleasant thoughts for a few moments. You work out what the "hot thought" is; you work out what the emotion is. You then work out what the evidence is for those, and how strongly you feel it. Then you think about the person making the comment, about why they might have made those comments (are they attacking you for a realistic reason, or are they just attacking a block of text on a screen, etc), you think about the good comments, and then you assess how strongly you still feel your hot thought and emotion. This process should be enough to interrupt the negative thoughts, which can sometimes churn and stay with people.
  - Semaphor 14y ago
    While it would probably help on Reddit (though it'd be impossible to implement there), I think it mostly helps against pure trolls and hateful comments. I don't think that's a major problem on HN. The bad comments here (I'd say) are mostly people who are simply not that friendly in their personality and very direct in what they say. Now on HN most readers can't downvote but personally I prefer some bad comments being higher than they should to Reddits mainstream-opinions only approach. edit: Just realized that my HN account is from a time I used this pseudonym, pretty much everywhere else I'm found under my real name;)
- petercooper 14y ago
  The comments on HN are still better than most on Reddit. Generally, but certain sub-Reddits have high quality discussions (/r/linguistics being one of my favorites).
  - Semaphor 14y ago
    Sure, and /r/AskScience (through very heavy moderation) as well. The more niche a sub is, the better the comments usually. For example /r/ecr started out great but with electronic cigarettes becoming more and more mainstream the sub starts to look like every other.
    - petercooper 14y ago
      I think the other thing I like about Reddit compared to HN is that even if the comments do start dropping in quality, it's usually because of humor rather than pedantry or general ill-will. (Which I quite like as a natural joker.)
hayksaakian 14y ago
I'd argue that the pedantry is not unfounded. As HN grows in popularity, it attracts those who wish to use it to push traffic with link bait. This leads to greater average suspicion about the motivation of the OP. Thus its easier to jump to conclusions as people become more cynical or critical.
sageikosa 14y ago
I have noticed that when I comment in agreement or furtherance of an idea, it often gets interpreted as debate or rebuttal of the "parent" remark even though such a reading would be impossible.
jerf 14y ago
Positive comments are generally considered fluffy and modded down. It is possible to simply expand on someone's point, or directly answer a question without attacking the arguer or premise somehow (as I am trying to do here), but the openings for that are rarer, whereas "attack the commenter/premise" is always available. What would happen to this point if it were merely "Yes, I agree."? And shouldn't it be modded down? I mean, who wants whole comment threads consisting of that? I think one of the fundamental underlying problems is just that the probability space of possible negative comments is just so much larger than positive ones that it isn't surprising that we end up with largely negative ones. I don't know what to do about it, and I've never heard a halfway feasible suggestion.

Semaphor 14y ago

The comments on HN are still better than most on Reddit. There have been discussion over discussions how to prevent the quality decay with a larger number of users (I remember the time before I had an account here when people were saying (paraphrased) "Don't link to HN, the riff raff will come"). As far as I know no one found a solution yet.

graeham 14y ago
One option would be non-alias usernames. Youtube seems to think this is the answer to poor-quality comments there, although I can see benefit for some HN posts being anonymous. The world is a tough place and life is too short to get worn down by a few jerks on the internet hiding behind their keyboards. It can be tough to take criticism on work you spend hours writing, and someone writes a nasty comment having spent only minutes or seconds reading it. And even with dozens of good comments, one bad one can make you feel crumby. It is a shame because it discourages people from submitting good content, but I think its best to just ignore bad comments.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > One option would be non-alias usernames. Youtube seems to think this is the answer to poor-quality comments there YouTube also provides an excellent example of the total failure of the "real names improve comments". I strongly agree with the rest of your comment. Some people are jerks. One technique that it useful to ignore jerks is to take just a few moments to help control the thoughts caused. You sit with the unpleasant thoughts for a few moments. You work out what the "hot thought" is; you work out what the emotion is. You then work out what the evidence is for those, and how strongly you feel it. Then you think about the person making the comment, about why they might have made those comments (are they attacking you for a realistic reason, or are they just attacking a block of text on a screen, etc), you think about the good comments, and then you assess how strongly you still feel your hot thought and emotion. This process should be enough to interrupt the negative thoughts, which can sometimes churn and stay with people.
- Semaphor 14y ago
  While it would probably help on Reddit (though it'd be impossible to implement there), I think it mostly helps against pure trolls and hateful comments. I don't think that's a major problem on HN. The bad comments here (I'd say) are mostly people who are simply not that friendly in their personality and very direct in what they say. Now on HN most readers can't downvote but personally I prefer some bad comments being higher than they should to Reddits mainstream-opinions only approach. edit: Just realized that my HN account is from a time I used this pseudonym, pretty much everywhere else I'm found under my real name;)
petercooper 14y ago
The comments on HN are still better than most on Reddit. Generally, but certain sub-Reddits have high quality discussions (/r/linguistics being one of my favorites).
- Semaphor 14y ago
  Sure, and /r/AskScience (through very heavy moderation) as well. The more niche a sub is, the better the comments usually. For example /r/ecr started out great but with electronic cigarettes becoming more and more mainstream the sub starts to look like every other.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    I think the other thing I like about Reddit compared to HN is that even if the comments do start dropping in quality, it's usually because of humor rather than pedantry or general ill-will. (Which I quite like as a natural joker.)

hayksaakian 14y ago

I'd argue that the pedantry is not unfounded. As HN grows in popularity, it attracts those who wish to use it to push traffic with link bait. This leads to greater average suspicion about the motivation of the OP. Thus its easier to jump to conclusions as people become more cynical or critical.

sageikosa 14y ago

I have noticed that when I comment in agreement or furtherance of an idea, it often gets interpreted as debate or rebuttal of the "parent" remark even though such a reading would be impossible.

jerf 14y ago

Positive comments are generally considered fluffy and modded down. It is possible to simply expand on someone's point, or directly answer a question without attacking the arguer or premise somehow (as I am trying to do here), but the openings for that are rarer, whereas "attack the commenter/premise" is always available. What would happen to this point if it were merely "Yes, I agree."? And shouldn't it be modded down? I mean, who wants whole comment threads consisting of that? I think one of the fundamental underlying problems is just that the probability space of possible negative comments is just so much larger than positive ones that it isn't surprising that we end up with largely negative ones. I don't know what to do about it, and I've never heard a halfway feasible suggestion.