Would be great to also include some of the idiosyncrasies in how HN comments/discussions often develop.
The way the first comment is often about something very tangential to the main topic of the post, and then proceeds to attract a large number of replies, completely sucking the oxygen out of the post’s main topic.
Or the way the first comment to a Show HN isn’t about any aspect of the project being shared, but instead is “you might find this other thing interesting”.
Or the inevitable “in mice” comment on any story about medicines.
Or in answer to an article about the discovery of free energy for mankind forever: “the CSS is totally broken”, inevitably followed by “works for me on Firefox”.
It's basically just bikeshedding but for comments. I don't think it's specific to this site. You get the same thing in peer review when you submit a paper to a journal. Those who don't know enough to comment on the main topic comment on other things they do know about.
Comments
Would be great to also include some of the idiosyncrasies in how HN comments/discussions often develop.
The way the first comment is often about something very tangential to the main topic of the post, and then proceeds to attract a large number of replies, completely sucking the oxygen out of the post’s main topic.
Or the way the first comment to a Show HN isn’t about any aspect of the project being shared, but instead is “you might find this other thing interesting”.
Or the inevitable “in mice” comment on any story about medicines.
Or in answer to an article about the discovery of free energy for mankind forever: “the CSS is totally broken”, inevitably followed by “works for me on Firefox”.
It's basically just bikeshedding but for comments. I don't think it's specific to this site. You get the same thing in peer review when you submit a paper to a journal. Those who don't know enough to comment on the main topic comment on other things they do know about.
But then there’s inevitably one great comment in there too, that suddenly makes things click or shifts your perspective…