> The cynical explanation for this is that people write negative comments to > show off how clever they are or how much they know. But I don’t think > that’

> The cynical explanation for this is that people write negative comments to > show off how clever they are or how much they know. But I don’t think > that’s enough to explain how dedicated many commenters are to posting > negative feedback. Instead, I think people do it because they believe it’s > the right thing. Our cultural obsession with critical thinking compels us > to point out errors when we perceive them; errors are injustices that we > must right. That explains why we tend to be so critical online, but I would expand upon the theory as to why we tend to do so so often. Most of the web falls into three categories: Trying to Get Page Views, Trying to Sell You Something, or Trying to Proselytize. Just looking at the front page of HN, many story titles are intentionally vague, if not inflamatory. Read any thread on reddit, and many comments try to filter or twist facts to support an opinion rather than make an insight. Whether you call it mediaspeak, doublespeak, or bulshytt, it is still an offensive tactic for attention at the cost of truth, and our cognitive capacity is a resource worth defending. > I think this in part explains why the Hacker School community is so much > more positive than the world at large: People come here firstly to learn > new things, not to dispute them. This suggests an interesting question: > Could you build a site like Hacker News with a community focused on > learning above all else? If it is possible, the system would need to go beyond current implementations of moderation that boil down to "up/down, flag/don't flag" and address the difference between disagreement and fact-checking (slashdot tried this by differentiating between "insightful, interesting, and informative"). I also suspect it would take a moderation team that vigilantly replaces link-bait summary articles with original sources and carefully considers the validity of paid content or opinion pieces. Tangential Postscript: I would pay money for a news site like HN or /. that focused exclusively on news, information, and data. Nothing is worse than the almost-daily links we get from someone who thinks they know how to improve a business, technology, or process, but offers no hard data to back up their ideas or observations. Hypothesis is fine in comments, but I expect a bit more from articles.