> "How come you're not lecturing that commentator?" joshjdr indicated that he wanted to understand the negative response his comment was generating. I provide

> "How come you're not lecturing that commentator?" joshjdr indicated that he wanted to understand the negative response his comment was generating. I provided him with an explanation; this is a service many HN commenters have expressed appreciation for in the past. The other guy made no such indication, so I gave him a downvote without explanation. > "I've never had the impression that every comment was directly relevant to the posted link." Perhaps my explanation was less clear than I hoped. The HN community has certain expectations for comment quality. Generally speaking, the less directly relevant a comment is, the more of some other positive quality it needs to have in order to be well-received. "Newegg really screwed up something unrelated to patent trolling" is both tangential and unenlightening.