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Comment by Wazzup12 | Hacker News Reader

User bcwood posted this in a neutral, matter of fact, way. Then I wonder why almost all the subsequent comments are so argumentative and biased. Chill, guys. Is being polite and cool not the thing to be on Internet?

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HN comments are often argumentative. Commonly the top comment on a submission attacks an incidental error in it, ignoring the point of the submission. This may be partly due to startups being scrappy. Or maybe because it's on the internet. However on HN, at least it's usually done politely and civilly.

The other kind of useless (noise aot signal) comment is the meta-comment. Like yours (and now mine).

The recommended solution is to ignore what you don't like. By focusing on the good, the bad falls away - especially on a time-based "news" site like this one. Tomorrow, it will be gone. Good advice for startups (ignore your competition; get on with making something great). Life too.

Think of the interesting comments have left neglected and unloved because of the time you spent reading these annoying ones.

I have noticed it too. I think it's mostly just old fashioned karma whoring...

So I guess the issue isn't that people on HN sometimes make emptily argumentative comment - but that people on HN vote them up.

I think so.

Thank you. I'm actually not upset about the situation, I just found it an interesting enough situation to share.

Ya this bothers me too. Though I'm guilty of it on occasion. I think it's the same reason that the famous "Someone is wrong on the internet" xkcd comic is so funny... [1] People have no etiquette and in many cases it's easier to bash and be argumentative on the internet because it's so impersonal. I can think of a number of people that post often here where I skim past their posts because they have built a bad reputation with me. I think the contrapositive also applies, there are some people that post enjoyable comments (even when I don't agree with what they are saying) and I make a point to read those. There was some discussion about a feature to make it easier to find people you find interesting... like maintain a list or something. But I don't think it's made it to the official features request page.

[1] http://xkcd.com/386/

I can't see which comments were so argumentative and biased, and impolite. They all seem fairly normal to me. Is there any particular example you could point out (seriously)?

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