> Every single day this is posted there is a raft of comments that either use ad hominems to attack the source without addressing what it had to say or red herrings

Those comments are getting really tiring and it's disappointing to see this place accept ad hominems against the source over and over in those threads instead of actually discussing the trial.

Ofc complaining about comment quality isn't new, that's existed before I started coming here.

Hn does a pretty good job of being off topic in threads but it's the nastiness of the comments that degrades the quality of conversation (I myself am guilty of this too, and I need to work on that).