Ask HN: Is brevity under-valued / underappreciated on HN?
Another way to ask is: Are longer comments more likely to be upvoted than shorter ones? Has anyone looked at this?
More often a good explanation or answer, is better than a quick answer. Like everything text based, paragraphs help.
Regardless of length, (I do ramble a bit though) I tend to find my early comments in the discussion before any crowd, will get the ire of negative nellys, snowflakes or average run of the mill ... person who doesn't like something I've said or agreed with, which will drown out any upvotes. When there's a lot of comments, I think those who are quick to dislike the general consensus have their attention spread thin.