Comment by npizzolato
12 years ago
There have been a lot of comments stating why this is a poor idea, but as someone who is sub-1000 karma, I haven't seen this reason posted yet (although I could only read the first half or so). In a typical day, I can't spend all day sitting on Hacker News refreshing threads and seeing if anyone has responded to me (or promoted my comment). But occasionally I'll read a thread, find a couple of interesting places to comment, and then go about my day until I can check in again later. Only being able to leave one comment in a single reasonable-length session would absolutely kill that use case. And frankly, it would make this site much less attractive to browse as an occasional commenter. Maybe you're okay with that, but I think that would be a mistake.
And frankly, it would make this site much less attractive to browse as an occasional commenter.
I find myself wondering whether that's part of the unstated goal of this action - getting fewer "occasional commenters". I have no clue on the reasons but clearly that will be an effect of the change. I think we can all see how rushed this rollout was so it's possible that is an unintended consequence.
Maybe they're after the comments that require several hours of research and multiple drafts. Anybody who can make a couple comments over a short period of time isn't putting in a whole lot of thought and effort into their comments. I get the feeling they're looking for comments that resemble blog posts rather than the conversational type of comments.
Why would rendering your comment invisible to the majority of people reading the thread make you more likely to put effort into it