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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I truly hate to pile on a "meta-comment", but this is already top-of-the-page and off-topic, so: I'm getting sick of comments about "why are there always so many negative comments?". There's nothing wrong with negative comments. Constructive criticism can be negative. This is the real-world, not high-self-esteem fairyland. Negative feedback/reactions are often the most useful kind.

But comments complaining about negativity are not helping anyone. Stop complaining, just use the upvote buttons to help determine what comments you like to see rise to the top.

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One concern of mine is there are so many comments about "I'm sick of comments about 'why are there so many negative comments?'" In my view, we should be very careful not to criticize people who criticize people for leaving negative comments, as non-negative comments about leaving negative comments are crucial, as are negative comments about not leaving non-negative comments.

This is the single best comment I have ever read anywhere, ever.

Middlebrow dismissals are pretty much the worst. Comments complaining about them may be off-topic, but at least they have some positive purpose, unlike "I don't mean to be negative, but this is totally pointless since there is something else that's kinda similar."

Actually I would find it very informative to know if there is something similar. It puts things into perspective, says something about the novelty and gives a lead to a similar tool. I will then decide what's useful an what isn't.

The problem is, there isn't anything else kinda similar - Web Components will enable things that are impossible for libs like jQuery Mobile and jQuery UI to do presenting (with any degree of sanity). The Web Component APIs will also allow us to optimize the code paths most important to component development, again, something that will never happen for random UI framework X, Y, or Z.

Commenters are partially motivated by the upvotes they receive for astute observations, which is a good thing. But this also encourages critics to compete for that "score: 5, Insightful" by finding the first chink in the armor.

I also prefer to leave it up the voters to reward/discourage behavior, rather than content campaigning.

It is like doing a mini-qual every time a new story makes it above the fold. And it is great, because the page just sits there and I get to attack it with deep nuanced arguments about stuff it didn't think about, stupid web page.

So yes, the astute observations of which the negative ones are usually the easiest to come up with (humans are choice rankers first, creators a distant n-th) get us points, and those points give us dopamine.

Remember when EVERYONE could see the points? The problem was even worse. Really, the points should go away or be delayed.

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