Comment by dang
20 hours ago
The goal isn't an "equal number of yaysayer and naysayers". I agree that would be doomed for a lot of reasons. Rather my complaint about these threads is that there's too much reflexive naysaying in the form of shallow dismissals, indignant denunciations, snarky formulations and so on.
If these commenters were arriving at their naysaying through curious exploration, that would be fine, but in that case we'd see indications of this in the comments—they would be lighter and more playful, would contain interesting details, and so on. This is unfortunately pretty rare among the naysayers. What I'm seeing instead is a lot of cranky curmudgeonism. Cranky curmudgeonism is a different internet game than the one we want HN to be playing.
Gotcha, I really don't want to push this anymore, I just want to point out that what we are discussing in this instance, or at least what I thought, is not reflexive crankiness in comments, but someone's essay/post that is, as far as it goes, thoughtful and nuanced.
But here, I think I can fill out your response: while the post itself is not reflexive curmudgeonism, the original headline itself would arguably encourage it in the comments, and that is something that falls under the purview of the guidelines, and gives reason for mods to editorialize. Submitters and authors and commenters must not only care about the content itself, but how it might be perceived at the surface (what the bait is), but only insofar as this fosters productive/curious conversation.
While I am still a little haunted by certain counterfactuals one could formulate in this case, and notwithstanding the one big elephant in the room I won't even bring up, this can check out for me and I get it and thanks. Again, its just good to know where HN stands, and I personally have benefited some from this reality check about the state of things for the site from your point of view.