zlacker

This is a technology problem.

It’s a symptom of an imperfect commenting system.

With a better system, just like in real life, I would more easily be able to only pay attention to the things I want to pay attention to.

>>waynef+(OP)
> This is a technology problem

totally agree, but I'd love to see a technology that's even better than real life like a discussion site where for each post, users could navigate a 'discussion topology/taxonomy' (i don't know the real terms?). There wouldn't be a need for adding comments that are just restating a position, you would just 'vote' for the position. You could add a new position, a new reason for a position, or new evidence for a reason for a position. The meta discussion the topology itself would be interesting. It would rarely achieve conflict resolution, but it would force us to better define our positions/reasons/evidence/core beliefs, and maybe help us understand others

>>waynef+(OP)
For better or worse, HN is a non-siloed site (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), meaning everyone sees the same things and is in one big room together. There are certainly design choices there, but each online community has its initial condition set and its pros and cons that flow from that. I don't think it's a question of perfection. It probably would not be wise to mess with those initial conditions—that would likely cause unintended consequences, so the bar to clear to justify it would have to be very high.

I've written about the pros and cons of the non-siloed format here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. It leads to a rather paradoxical situation.