zlacker

>>pg+(OP)
A privmsg feature, available to people who cross a karma or karma average feature, that would allow gruseom to tell people offline that their comments are dumb. Sometimes it's good to make an example of a dumb comment, but other times it just begs for an unproductive fight.

>>tptace+S
Interesting idea. That would be pretty easy to implement: it could be an ordinary comment, but that would only be visible to the sender and the receiver.

>>pg+K3
Note that this won't "fix" the comment problem, but every time it is used, more likely than not, it's going to improve the comment threads, because the alternative is publicly calling someone out.

Please label it "the gruseom button".

>>tptace+D4
You've called me out in public before. Shame is an effective teacher.

>>jacque+2b
Except with sufficiently snarky/provocative comments trying to shame the commenter might look from the outside like something very similar to petty disagreement.

I think some people here are learning that hugely self-confident, strongly opinionated, obvious writing tends to spark a strong agreement reaction on the readers, who quickly upvote a comment that adds nothing to a discussion. These are a problem, as they encourage snark and posing over effectively arguing things out, but they are very hard to treat as disagreeing with them is likely to cause knee-jerk reactions in many upvoters.

>>alextp+Be
Strongly agree with where you're going here. Every time I see a "senior" or "better" HN handle call someone dumb, I think: well, who says you're so smart? Who makes you the dictator of "good" comments?

I never see "nice" tellings-off. A "nice" telling-off might be: "reader123, this comment is mean. please be nicer"

>>crassh+Xk
That is exactly the sort of telling-off I got. It was polite and to the point. After I edited and apologised tptacek deleted his remonstration.