Am here for over 2 years now, rarely upvote something, haven't submitted anything and this is just my 2nd comment... Pretty sure this rule holds for close to all kind of forums.
How many people posted letters to news papers in the hay day of paper news..
These are real, actual people who submit comments. And those people are anonymous and free to post whatever lies they care to come up with on forums such as this one.
Is is just that you don't care enough to reply, feel like your opinions are unpopular, don't feel like you have anything to say, or something else?
Of course, sometimes when reading comments I get the feeling that you people are all entirely, inexcusably wrong, and I feel an urge to set the record straight. Normally on HN, it doesn't take long for someone to step up and explain exactly what I was thinking with an eloquence I couldn't have matched. And the world is right again. :-)
Your comment now is marked "5 minutes ago" and seems game for a reply, but later today when it's "5 hours ago" or longer, I'd feel like it has expired and any reply would be lost and never seen.
Not commenting is the natural state for most people. Maybe the question isn't why these people don't post, but why active commenters do.
As a lurker for me most of the times I feel like I am on window shopping of ideas. Not looking anything in particular.
Sometimes I have a question to pose, or I disagree with the premise of the submission (sometimes I'm one of the few people to do so).
I'm a singular, non-influential person. I don't believe I'm exactly changing hearts and minds writing HN comments. I do like the discourse I get, though.
For me personally, I just don't care and don't get any reward in the idea of conversing with some random person on the internet. The chances are, I'll never see you again on here or irl, remember your online name (I remember faces, not names), or you will have any real impact in my day to day life. This is how I feel about every commenter online. I don't talk to random people on the street, so why would I talk to random people on the internet? To me, there is little difference.
I value face to face communication much higher than text chat. I really enjoy reading peoples faces and expressions when chatting, to the point where I find talking to others online is the equivalent of having a conversation where everyone has a paper bag on their head when.
If I think someone is wrong on the internet, I just don't care. I read their comment, think to myself "They are wrong/an idiot" and get on with my day. I see no value in correcting a stranger on the internet.
I much rather have conversations irl, and I do, so I have no time/energy left for an online conversation. I'd much rather spend my time with my girlfriend, programming or anything else.
Everything feels so permanent online. I know I'm going to regret things I've said in this post in the future, my mind will change, maybe I won't lurk anymore after writing this!? The permanent nature of online communication goes the against how I should be as person, my opinions shifting and changing as I experience more of life, not held back by some random thing I said on a forum 5 years ago.
When I post, I open myself up to being attacked by people online. I can avoid this simply by never saying anything online.
To illustrate a point, I finally got round to creating an account on stackoverflow about half a year ago, and I still have only one point. I just wanted to vote on questions, but I can only do that if I have at least 15 points on my account, and that requires writing comments/questions (I think). For me, that means contriving 15 comments that succeed at playing some social game, that I simply don't have the time or energy for, so I've given up on ever voting on stackoverflow.
I almost left during the year of the US primaries as the news was majority political and simply more garbage, so I'm glad that got cleaned up.
Often I don't have anything "more" to say on top of what has been said, so I wont add noise. That may be a common thread with lurkers. When I do have a unique perspective and I feel adds value and not noise I may comment, keyword is "may".
I couldn't care less about karma, popularity, social scores or the like (just more garbage). As long as this site and it's users continue to provide value to me by filtering and aggregating tech news I will continue to use it.
Just another lurker mooching off of non lurkers. Selfish yes, but it works.
Sometimes I won't add a comment because of the chilling effect of a future employer or online mob finding it and reading something into my words. It's not worth being contrarian on the internet, or there's no space for devils advocate anymore. Most of the time I will comment and it's fine though.
Sometimes, unrelated, I will write a comment and then when my thoughts are formulated, I delete it because I have benefited from the conversation and there wouldn't be any additional benefit or use from me posting it.
When I was young I enjoyed commenting and voicing my opinion, after 25 years online, I no longer derive satisfaction from it.
The topics on HN generally align with my interests and the quality of discourse here is fairly high, but I'm rarely willing to make the additional mental effort of participating. I prefer to research any points I make and back them up with data, and it's not worth my time to do so only to end up arguing with trolls or people who refuse to reconsider their position when presented with new information.