Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#1

Post by mrspeaker » Thu, May 16, 2013, 1:19 PM UTC

I've recently found myself grumbling at some of the shallow comments on HN - especially around topics that are more subjective or open to opinions. Most of these were snarky one-liners, very minor points, or snap replies to other comments.

Do you think doing a "reverse twitter" and enforcing a comment minimum length would help stop fly-by not-very-helpful comments?

I'm not saying all short comments are useless (I'm a short-comment kind of guy myself: I blame the internet) - but perhaps longer comments would force people to only speak when they had stuff to say. Any guesses on the side-effects of such a change?

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#2

Post by kissmd » Thu, May 16, 2013, 1:23 PM UTC

short.....................long?

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#3

Post by mrspeaker » Thu, May 16, 2013, 1:33 PM UTC

kissmd wrote: post #2

short.....................long?

A comment like this (aside from being an excellent example of a short comment) would be seen as just what it is: an attempt to circumvent the "crap comment" policy and would be downvoted into light-grey hell. Actually, I was just going to start downvoting minimally-useful short comments but it's not very fair when the authors wouldn't know why: hence this AskHN!

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#4

Post by Lionga » Thu, May 16, 2013, 1:39 PM UTC

no

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#5

Post by beeneto » Thu, May 16, 2013, 1:48 PM UTC

I don't think so. People posting overly-wordy comments is already a problem here, I assume because it makes the comment seem more "in depth". I think a minimum length would make that problem worse.

The redditification problem comes up every so often, but from what I've read in those threads I think it's being dealt with by other means, i.e. by tweaking the vote weighting.

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#6

Post by kissmd » Thu, May 16, 2013, 1:53 PM UTC

mrspeaker wrote: post #3

kissmd wrote: post #2

short.....................long?

A comment like this (aside from being an excellent example of a short comment) would be seen as just what it is: an attempt to circumvent the "crap comment" policy and would be downvoted into light-grey hell. Actually, I was just going to start downvoting minimally-useful short comments but it's not very fair when the authors wouldn't know why: hence this AskHN!

ok, a try with another one: "42, but since that * mrspeaker got hn to allow only long comments, i must do some trolling here to match minimum character restriction"

if i want to make a two char comment or even a 2000 character comment, pls let me decide!

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#7

Post by briholt » Thu, May 16, 2013, 11:21 PM UTC

Lionga wrote: post #4

no

agree

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#8

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:35 AM UTC

This has come up before. To ban short comments would be to ban a sizable amount of Paul Graham's own comments.

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#9

Post by rdl » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:37 AM UTC

No.

Banning the single word comment "This." or any close variation thereof would improve quality, though.

Re: Ask HN: Would an HN comment length minimum improve quality?

#10

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, May 17, 2013, 1:09 AM UTC

No, brevity is a positive feature.

Stupid comes in all lengths, and long stupid is not better than short stupid, it just takes up more real estate and time to slog through to figure out that its stupid.