Comment by pg
13 years ago
I'd been thinking about this. It's true that sometimes an article is so obviously mistaken that the most valuable comment would be one that pointed out how. But such articles are fairly rare here. Ideally comment threads in which the top comment was a dismissive one would be proportionately rare. Whereas now they're almost like background radiation.
I agree, but I'm not sure that there is any other way to establish positive discourse -- for most posts there are the enthusiasts and the middlebrow detractors, and virtue may often only appear after both of these positions are raised and discarded in favor of an hopefully Aristotelean mean. This is also to say that appropriate discourse depends largely on the context (i.e. what has already been said on the topic), and not simply on a single right answer (as in the sciences).
It would be interesting to do some sentiment analysis on comments and look at the statistics of dissmissive/approving top comments and all comments in general in HN threads.
I think the way to solve this is by better education and reinforcement. Wouldn't hurt to place a prominent link in the top nav like"better commenting" that went to a page with explanations and examples of good and bad. Perhaps have it up there one week per month.