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Your incentive to post should be genuine interest in engaging in a mature and thoughtful discussion about HN topics. If you have something valuable to add the e

by dfc 13y ago

Your incentive to post should be genuine interest in engaging in a mature and thoughtful discussion about HN topics. If you have something valuable to add the expectation is that it will not sit in the pending pile for too long and once the comment leaves the pending state it will not be drowned out by unhelpful/unwanted comments. If spending five or ten minutes to compose a comment is too much of an investment maybe HN is not the best place for the user.

chinpokomon 13y ago
Am I only supposed to send five or ten minutes to compose a comment? Regularly I've posted comments that take as much as an hour to write. This is because I take the time to find sources to back up and support my position, and then I write my comment. After that, I reread what I wrote and edit the comment so that it is grammatically correct and factually sound. Finally, I reread it once more and really consider if I'm contributing to the discussion. I've never really focused on karma. I've never tried to game the system. Because of this discussion I checked where I stand and I only have 132 points but with almost a 2 average. I think that supports my claim that I make thoughtful posts, but I don't know what the site average is. I hope that this system doesn't backfire for me and for other similar contributors.
- dfc 13y ago
  What part of my comment gave you the impression that I think 5 to 10 minutes was the upper bounds?
  - chinpokomon 13y ago
    There wasn't, but I took it as the average, which still seems low. Since I discovered HN, I've been nothing but impressed with the audience. I think the nature of the site is one of the reasons the topics and comments are of higher quality than other news aggregation sites. Well over a decade ago, I was a regular reader of /. and I find that HN is reminiscent of those earlier days. After adding moderating and meta-moderating, the quality of /. suffered. I'm sure it wasn't moderation that actually brought about those problems and it had more to do with reaching a broader audience, but still it is unnerving to see my favorite forums gradually follow the same trajectories time and time again.

by dfc 13y ago

chinpokomon 13y ago

Am I only supposed to send five or ten minutes to compose a comment? Regularly I've posted comments that take as much as an hour to write. This is because I take the time to find sources to back up and support my position, and then I write my comment. After that, I reread what I wrote and edit the comment so that it is grammatically correct and factually sound. Finally, I reread it once more and really consider if I'm contributing to the discussion. I've never really focused on karma. I've never tried to game the system. Because of this discussion I checked where I stand and I only have 132 points but with almost a 2 average. I think that supports my claim that I make thoughtful posts, but I don't know what the site average is. I hope that this system doesn't backfire for me and for other similar contributors.

dfc 13y ago
What part of my comment gave you the impression that I think 5 to 10 minutes was the upper bounds?
- chinpokomon 13y ago
  There wasn't, but I took it as the average, which still seems low. Since I discovered HN, I've been nothing but impressed with the audience. I think the nature of the site is one of the reasons the topics and comments are of higher quality than other news aggregation sites. Well over a decade ago, I was a regular reader of /. and I find that HN is reminiscent of those earlier days. After adding moderating and meta-moderating, the quality of /. suffered. I'm sure it wasn't moderation that actually brought about those problems and it had more to do with reaching a broader audience, but still it is unnerving to see my favorite forums gradually follow the same trajectories time and time again.