Comment by mindcrime
3 years ago
HN isn't intended to be your blog's commenting system though. If you want a dialogue between the author and their audience, have the discussion at the source. HN is for HN'ers. And as a fellow commenter noted, quite a few people (myself included) frequently just use the article title (or maybe a small quote from the article) as a "writing prompt". And there's nothing wrong with that unless your expectations are out of whack in the first place.
And probably half of the time an HN comment leads to a discussion that is tangential to the original topic, and that thread becomes the most active sub-thread of the discussion. And I would argue, again, that that is totally fine. Nothing is written mandating that all (or even any) of the discussion on an HN link be pertinent to the point that the author of TFA was trying to make. It's nice when it is, but as long as the ensuing discussion is interesting, then it's useful to the people who are participating. For people who don't like that, then yeah sure, you're free to choose not to read HN comments. shrug
I think the "title as a writing prompt" approach can be frustrating in some cases, as an HN participant. Essentially every article about general interest SWE topics (remote work, job interviews, etc.) gets dominated by the exact same viewpoint and complaints, no matter how specific the focus of the original article.