Probably half the people who frequent this website, if not more, are some form of web engineer or at the very least are web-adjacent. It’s a function of UX being a core paradigm of that work that leads to such frequent reflections about a submitted link’s “finer points.”

I understand the posts are extremely repetitive, but I’ve not seen a non-regressive attempt to account for this clear and evident desire to discuss this on HN’s part. As far as I know, HN has never tried to have a different comment section for this or other “””offtopic””” discussions, it’s only ever harangued people for talking about it.

I was a roofer in my twenties, three decades ago. When you ride around with roofers, you inevitably hear “oh, that one’s a piece of shit. Oh that one’s nice. Oh, they screwed the pooch with that flashing. Oh, that pattern looks great.” It’s part of the trade to reflect on other roofs, and it comes with the territory in most trades, ime, to talk to other tradespeople about best practices.

I’ve long thought splitting the comment section into Topic and Offtopic would result in better user experience, as well as tagging posts, being able to mute other users, and a million other features forums had twenty (!) years ago. I already know how desperately HN insists upon itself, but this is my frustration with the moderation surrounding these points. Users have no customization of the experience, they want to talk about the experience, HN says no, of course not.