This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post | Hacker News Reader

This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post

faultline.org

94 pointsjsm38659 comments

This is the comment where I begin a new comment thread, in hopes that it'll be more prominent than if I had just contributed to the existing comment thread.

This is the sentence where I really don't add anything to the conversation, but simply seek to obtain more upvotes. This is the sentence where you decide to downvote me because you find my ruse to be so blatantly obvious.

This is the comment where I ask why people are voting the parent comment down.

This is a comment where I commend parent commenter on a command completed as parent's comment's parent is now at +thirteen.

This is the comment where I thank the previous commenter and complain that people shouldn't vote down things they disagree with.

This is the comment which uses a popular fighting video game reference to break the chain of the thread.

This comment shamelessly replies something vaguely relevant to the highest scoring root comment in the hope of attracting trickle-down karma.

This is the comment where I show everyone how much I paid attention in English class by correcting the (grammar|punctuation|spelling|turn of phrase) you used in your comment while contributing nothing to the discussion at hand.

This is the sentence in which I ask a question taking the incindiary post at face value. This sentence is a common-sense answer to my question, starting with "it seems that". This is the sentence in which I suggest that maybe conventional wisdom is correct. This sentence states a fact to support my suggestion.

This sentence attacks the blog for fallacious reasoning. This one points out the [strawman|false dilemma| other]. This sentence suggests that if the central argument is based on a fallacious point, the whole thing could be wrong. This is the sentence where I backpedal a bit and declare fallacious reasoning is not strictly indicative of an incorrect conclusion.

Edit: This is the edit where I poke fun at mistakes in my hastily typed response above.

This is the sentence in which I invoke my [Yale|Harvard|Princeton|Caltech|MIT] diploma and lay into you with a subtle ad hominem. This is the sentence in which I narrow the problem to 1% of its original scope, eliminating the most useful and difficult 99%. This is the sentence in which I then solve that 1%, invoking advanced statistical techniques as I do so. This is the sentence in which I act far more humble than my accomplishment merited.

Here is the comment where I come to talk about how this community isn't what it was once. This sentence is where I would compare this community to another popular online community which I frequent but refer to in a demeaning fashion on other sites.

This is the comment where I point out that, based on the number of votes the submission has received, it seems that you're alone in considering this submission to an example of the decadence of Hacker News; and note that, in any case, the correct response is to flag the submission, not to complain about it in the comments.

This is the sentence in which I try to steer the thread back to he original topic. This sentence is my backup in which I blather unrelated, anecdotal stuff from my workplace, because it just popped into my head and I have the slight feel that my first sentence won't meet his purpose.

This is a comment nobody actually really sees, because they skipped down the page when they saw the conversation indent this far over.

>lay into you with a subtle ad hominem

This is the pedantic reply in which I suggest that you might actually be thinking of argumentum ad verecundiam rather than argumentum ad hominem.

Edit: this is the edit in which I italicize the Latin terms above to make myself sound more erudite.

This is the ashamed reply in which I falsely reinterpret my original sentence, claiming that I intended both argumenta. This is the sentence in which I emit additional additional argumenta, which I just looked up in Wikipedia.

This sentence is the beginning of a long and tangentially relevant argument about the Crusades.

This sentence is an aloof expression of awe at the intensity of the reaction to an obvious troll.

This sentence cites an obscure [Russian expatriate|investigative journalist|fringe physicist|absurdly cross-disciplinary|Eric Scott Raymond|Theodore Dalrymple] author with a coherent yet slightly cranky theory that [explodes|confirms] the argument of the blog post. This sentence was originally a veiled insult directed at everyone who hasn't already read the book, but was edited.

This sentence is an admission of the irony inherent in laughing off the subject followed by arguing about it.

This is a comment where I point out a minor factual inaccuracy in your comment that does not affect your thesis in any way.

This is the comment where I spend entirely too much effort correcting that inaccuracy.

This is the comment where I try to recast this argument in terms of the two major US political parties, while clearly showing my allegiance to one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_is_the_Vaguely_Relevant_Ar...

This is a comment in which I haven't read the blog and make some wild rebuttal of a completely irrelevant point based on the title of the submission.

This is the comment in which I point out how irrelevant your point is. This is the sentence in which I address the point you made, while excusing myself for continuing the offtopic discussion.

This is the opening of my remark, where I warn that my out-of-the-box thinking will probably get me down-voted, because the people I'm choosing to share my precious idea with are just that close-minded and contemptible.

This is the actual content of my remark, which is somewhat contrary to what some (but not all) people in the discussion have already said. Here is why I try to emphasize how radical and yet somehow self-evident my opinion is, despite it not really being either.

This is the comment where I bring this thread back around to the topic of how you hash your passwords, that being all I ever talk about around here.

This is a comment that states that this isn't Hacker News and has been flagged.

This is a comment which quotes the part of the Hacker News Guidelines which state "if you flag something, please don't also comment that you did".

This is a comment where I point out that the article is good, but the title is slightly misleading and a link-baiting exercise.

I miss the old kuro5hin too, you guys. (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/5/31/7738/22985)

Edit to add link to this, referenced in the comments there, and reasonably awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=281ax7Ovlsg

Also, http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2006/04/07/4991

This is the pithy offhand comment that gets ten times more upvotes than any well-reasoned and thoughtful response you'll ever write.

This is the comment in which I say something which is totally irrelevant to the topic and end up contributing nothing to discussion

This is the angry comment where I note that this topic has been-upvoted quite a bit and has dozens of comments, but the post on terribly important issue I care about has received no such attention.

This is the comment where I link to Norvig without adding any insight of my own.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

This is the comment where I say HN is turning into Reddit because of posts like this.

This the comment where I quote the part of the Hacker News Guidelines which recommend that "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit".

This is the comment where I complain about people down-voting me and demand to know why they are doing so.

This is the comment where I remark that I have downvoted you for complaining about downvotes, as I always do.

(Meta: it is bloody hard to balance the competing requirements of giving comments the votes they deserve for cleverness here, and giving them the votes the comments they're self-referential placeholders for should have had.)

This is the comment where I stiffly thank the parent commenter for eir explanation.

(Meta: I'd avoided trying to do the latter, lest I punish people for referencing a type of comment I don't like.)

This is the most awesome HN thread ever.

This is the comment where I say something about how the blog post relates to my own life, which no one cares about.

This is where I point out (as I did on the original) that the author is shamelessly stealing an old idea from David Moser: http://consc.net/misc/moser.html (which, btw, is well worth reading for anyone who hasn't seen it already).

This is the comment where I fly into a violent rage because someone had the notion of bringing up such an outrageous idea, and attempt to shut down the idea through a combination of wild accusation and difficult-to-verify conjecture.

This is the comment where someone having a bad morning decides to jump into the fray with the parent commenter by arguing back just as intemperately.

This is the comment complaining about incendiary blog posts being so typical, lately.

This is a comment where I take an obvious corollary of the thesis and state it as if it, too, is a dazzling insight, in a shameless attempt to gain HN karma.

This is the comment where I note a moderately interesting aspect of the issue, but as the discussion has already tapered off, nobody will notice it.

This is the comment where I apologize for downvoting you. This is not a comment where I make any reference to the article.

TL;DR: This sentence contains the thesis of the blog post, a trite and obvious statement cast as a dazzling and controversial insight.

This comment further simplifies the thesis into an obviously trivial and tautological form.

This sentence then points out that there is nothing new or insightful in the simplified thesis.

I am glad to see that the replies here have been humerous - Hackernews can be a little too serious sometimes.

This is the comment where I express appreciation for the post in a single, bland remark free of real content.

This is the comment decrying the drop in quality on HN, and ask for fascinating articles about Erlang.

This is the comment where I say you really avoid the problem in the article if you just code in Common Lisp.

Ceci n'est pas une comment.

This is the reply where I pick apart the French in the previous comment, and show that it doesn't say what the commenter wanted it to say.

Ceci est le commentaire où je signale que j'ai arrêté l'apprentissage du français en 10 e année :(

This is the soon-to-be-dead spam post linking to a page selling cheap replica watches.

What a fine bait for those who gloat in form over content.

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