1) Start humbly by saying you might be wrong / you're not sure / ...
2) Criticize the work showed in the link from your personal opinion, without real arguments.
3) End in the same way: "Just saying." "I hope I'm wrong".
Yes, this "just a fancy blog for engineering stories as a means of hiring more engineers". I'm not sure how one can say such a precise thing without being sure.
Edit: I should probably add that it isn't halflings' comment alone, but the fact that the entire discussion went massively meta, that made this subthread problematic.
What particular deficiency of the HN comment threading system is this particular act of moderation addressing?
One layer of indirection strikes me as about right for subthreads that go far off-topic (or violate the site rules).
It would have made much more sense to leave @morley's original comment wondering if the actual post, "Is this just a fancy blog for engineering stories as a means of hiring more engineers?" and instead detached @hafling's comment about @morley's comment style.
You left the comment that was commenting on the commenting style of the detached post.
It seems like you detached the WRONG comment, hence my confusion.
"Detached" means we disconnected a reply (11195956) from its original parent (11195956) and moved it to the top level instead. That moved all its child comments too. Then we marked the entire subthread offtopic, which moves it lower on the page.
A) @hafling's comment (11195956) now looks like it is directly referencing the parent discussion (therefore it's lost its context).
B) Your comment about detaching it (11196963) references the comment it was detached from, BUT because a link to a sub-thread opens the linked sub-thread as a parent thread, it appears to be a brand-spanking new thread (if I haven't properly articulated this, click https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11195895 and you'll get the idea)
C) I don't see any indication that the offtopic sub-thread has been marked as offtopic.
Combining these, B makes it look like the relevant conversation has been completely detached from the relevant conversation, while A and C makes it look like the off-topic conversation has been left, but it's now lost it's context.
I absolutely agree, the sub-thread is off-topic. But the detachment result is just downright confusing!
I'd rather there be a visible flag that a sub-thread is off-topic with a way to collapse the off-topic thread (something I'd love to see anyway for several other reasons), maybe even auto-collapse an off-topic thread (somewhat similarly to the way dead-threads default to not being shown, and when they are shown they are flagged as such).
Just my thoughts after being really confused! (Kinda ironic, given my original comment on the sub-thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11196732)
@dang - Special thanks for helping me understand what was going on!
edited: trying to make my statement slightly more clear
There is no sensible reason in using the various patterns -- such as to "start humbly by saying you might be wrong / you're not sure / ..." -- "to dull the edges of an opinion" when the commenter can simply prefix whatever he is saying with "In my opinion, " and be done with it.
Why call ourselves intelligent beings and rely on such archaic tricks?
*
Also, in regards to this pattern being "the root" of a lot of great discourse you have experienced in person (in particular) - what I can say is that I have found such patterns/ tricks to be only necessary when I'm feeling even the slightest malice towards the subject matter or the other person (requiring mellowing down the said feeling); in every other case, a straightforward/ direct stating of the opinion (with little to no adverse feelings involved) has been the most propitious course of action.
I rarely do it, "to dull the edges of an opinion". Instead, I do it to provide explicit context (e.g. this my opinion or my observation, similar to the way people will use 'IANAL' in discussion of a legal matter) and to let people know that I genuinely think I'm missing the point. The only way someone might be able to help fill in what I've missed is to explain what I see from my perspective. While most of the time, my perspective turns out to be pretty close to the mark, there have been times when I was really, really off, and someone was able to help provide the context necessary for comprehension.
In this particular case, I actually thought exactly the same thing as the original commentor and am glad to know that I'm not alone in my impression and subsequent confusion that "I think I'm missing the point"!
If I enter a conversation where I'm unsure how the audience will interpret my opinion, I'll start by making sure everyone knows that I'm open minded, have an opinion, and have no expectation of others to have the same.
I'll follow-up with my thoughts on the matter, and close by reassuring my audience that it's just an opinion, I'd love to hear their arguments too, and yes, I AM confident in my views, but I've certainly been wrong in the past, so I'm all ears.
Id love to be more curt. But a deep thread-war is the death of every comment, so preempting every possible rebuttal is your only choice. And on HN, every rebuttal is possible.
Basically, in order to react to something someone else said, you identify something that it's possible to disagree with or call into question.
If something is good, it lives on by being copied and reposted. You contribute for contribution's sake, alone.
The downside is that you have to manually wade through the low quality posts/trolls yourself, but I don't find this to be too big of a deal in practice.
As an aside: I actually really like the way the marketing here speaks to me as an engineer, and the way we are generally in a place of understanding the context of our work in a world that doesn't understand the brass tacks of that work.
It's intended to dull the edges of an opinion (correct me if I'm wrong here, I'm not entirely sure).
Ultimately I'm not convinced upvoting / downvoting is a good metric but I'm not sure what is better. The same goes or ordering; if you arrive at something on social media where you're the expert / can provide possibly the best feedback but there are already 100 comments on it? Good luck. You'll be drowned out.
This is a fun aside topic though :)
Haters gonna hate, I've heard. But maybe one or two haters had second thoughts while adding insincere hedges and qualifications, and decided not to post their bilge after all? Or decided to read the original posting before commenting?
I'm going to hope so. The thought will make me read a hundred hedges and qualifications with a smile.
This is a result of HN's guidelines that say "It's explicitly okay to downvote based on disagreement", whereas for example Reddit's guidelines say "Downvote based on quality, not opinion". As a result, you get an aversion to disagreement, with a lot of "I think maybe.." and "I could be wrong.." phrases.