zlacker

That's what impressed me when I first came across HN - the signal-to-noise ratio. The comments sections were always filled with thoughtfully written comments that provided useful insights into interesting topics.

Thank you @dang for your diligence and commitment to the task.

>>doc_gu+(OP)
For me the noise is still there, even if it takes another form. Jokes, puns and nastiness are swapped for hacker-y style rants (we know how idiosyncratic many of hackers are) or people who talk about things they lack the knowledge of.

Ironically, under front page HN submissions where comments would give some context, often there are none. Who upvoted them all the way to the front page? People who want to feel intelligent? Edit: this may be related to the moderator's override function where they put some submissions manually on the front page.

>>rathel+Su
Did you just do a hacker-y style rant?

>>mrspea+4y
...or maybe it’s important feedback? Why immediately assume malevolence or ill-intent?

>>doc_gu+(OP)
Hot take: the fact that HN comments have an academic/professional tone doesn't make the noise go away. It just makes it easier to pass for useful comments.

On huge threads with like 1k comments, I do find that the high quality ones float to the surface (having more to do with stuff like hiding vote counts and restricting down vote access IMO). However, it's not hard to find people confidently talking out of their ass making it to the top of threads with even hundreds of comments. Look for people talking about something you are an expert in (or do a brief google search on a topic somebody is claiming expertise in, especially if it is related to ideology) and it isn't hard to spot. There are even all the bad cliche comments of the other platforms even if they aren't as simple as "have an upvote my friend" or "username checks out".

I find threads on politics and culture particularly unbearable here because it's the exact same chest beating and narratives that you will find on any other platform except that the posters possess the same self-rightousness and academic tone as if they were talking about mathematical fact and not a political opinion. Even more so, it often comes without the self-awareness to know that your opinions and arguments are most often being taken from whatever social media you frequent. Everybody is a "free thinker" here even though they spout off the exact same political arguments as everybody else in their clique. It makes some threads pretty toxic IMO because of how seriously everyone takes themselves. I'm of course making general claims to which there are exceptions, but this is something I've seen.

Thinking that you need to be super-intelligent to post on or browse HN is a bad meme. Take the guy below me that thinks jokes on HN "require higher levels of intelligence to parse". It's the same mentality that part of the Rick and Morty fan base gets made fun of for.

>>djaque+5q4
To make a distinction, my comment applies specifically to the comments that pertain to technical topics and that which are backed by actual (scientific) research and data.

I have no interest in the cultural warfare that supposedly educated ideologues seek to impose on society at large.