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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Please don't post reflexively dismissive comments to HN, especially when talking about other people's work, and extra-especially when it's the first comment to a thread. You might have a good point, but the genre itself drowns it out in a medium-is-the-message way. Discussions are sensitive to initial conditions and we're hoping that HN can be better than that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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I think the pattern where the comments usually disagree with the article is healthy. It's a point-counterpoint argument structure, where the odd layers in the tree are arguing opposite to the even layers.

The article makes its case, the first comments make the case that was missing from the article, the replies make the case missing from them... and so on.

You're right, and we're not asking commenters to always agree with an article—but when disagreeing, to reflectively engage rather than reflexively dismiss. The article doesn't necessarily deserve such treatment, but the community does. We all share an interest in HN being a place for quality discussion, and this is how quality discussion emerges.

It is most important early in the thread, because discussions are sensitive to initial conditions and the blank page is most vulnerable to rapid, shallow responses. By the time the more thoughtful ones have had time to emerge, the thread is often already choked by faster-growing weeds.

I read the article before posting, it's not reflexive.

I believe you, but the comment itself contains one commonplace criticism ("data practices"—an important issue, but not so relevant in this context and very widely discussed elsewhere) followed by two cheap insinuations. That's not good enough. That combo of shallow and inflammatory is exactly what takes threads into hot mediocrity.

That's a bit harsh and I definitely don't mean to pick on you. It's a systemic problem. I'm hoping we can gradually persuade the community to be more conscious of it.

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