Thanks, this is a great post. I appreciate your taking the time to comment here. It was recently reading another Ask HN post, and one of your comments inspired me to post here:
<From: Ask HN: What is the consensus on Hacker News?>
A large part of the supposed "sentiments" show in comments, submissions, and voting/flagging are really just playing to the crowd. Though it might be offensive to some, the typical phrase is "karma whoring." It's really just human nature at work; if you buy or buy into some expensive widget, you promote your choice publicly to gather the esteem of your peers. Similarly, if you abandon something, you disparage it publicly to promote your choice and gather the esteem of your peers.[1]
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4489216
Having just clocked over 500 myself, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on this subject more specifically.
From my personal perspective, I've seen things a bit all over the place. I've seen some things that are on point, some that are off. Some things driven by subject matter, others broadly by the form of expression. In one or two cases, people may actually write a note with explantion. I actually apprecitate that, but there's a reason we probably don't see more of it.
The information and inference aspect -- ie, if this is feedback how to measure it and repsond -- was recently highlighted for me. I made a post with a subtle but salient observation (including quotation from the article, etc.) on the nature of science. That received half a dozen or so +1s. An couple of ours later, the net +1 was as per original post. Which led me to think: Hmm, if I did not just see this go up +6 I would not have seen it go -5 to +1. I wonder how many other posts have such latent information in them? So, this thought has been sitting in my head since, I'm not sure if it has crossed the paths of others as well. In this particular case, as in others, I think there was an element of something like this:
If A then B......If B is true it might signal weakness in C
So, people who support C for whatever reason go ballistic.
Unfortunately, the logic of these attacks is usually a mess.
Somewhat Ironically, I've seen this happen with C once being the concept of Decorum. Actually, more than once. And again, this was something I thought it useful to note and put aside, but ultimate to ask here to the larger group.
Personally, I appreciate people guiding via comments when someone is off topic or out of order. I think it shows a bit of leadership and of course the person is taking a risk of catching some flak. It sets a tone for keeping the cruft light. Which allows people to follow and hopefully develop the argument, rather than have it digress into a spiral of minutae.
By the same token, It is also useful to see orthogonal comments occasionally. A pointed, counterintuitive thought. Or counter-example. Etc. The edge-case here is the use of Irony. It arguably does not translate over the internet. Is somewhat exclusionary to people not well versed in its particulars. And it is arguably counterthetical to certain forms of logic. But it is information efficient.
This leads to another point you make, which i think is worthwile to highlight: Not every HN reader is a native english speaker. I think this is a very valid point to always keep in mind.
In the quest for information efficiency, I try too keep most posts short (cue: Irony alert). The old saying "sorry I wrote such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a shorter one" comes to mind. But condensing information can make it inpenetrable and lead to mis-understandings and ultimately more side-bar discussions, etc.
Which brings me to one last point: I looked at the comment I made that you referenced, and yes that was arguably inpenetrable. The Tl;dr - I was agreeing with you.