11–20 of 54 posts
To illustrate this, I've often found myself totally agreeing with an article until I read a rebuttal from an HN comment which helped me put the article in perspective.
It would be interesting to see the data and trends behind submission upvoters and comment upvoters.
In my opinion, this is because there isn't a downvote button on stories. Because there isn't a downvote button on stories, posting a comment that disagrees with the premise of the story has become the de facto "downvote" button. It's easy karma to get, all you have to do is disagree with the sentiment of the post with barely more detail than "no, I disagree". Then, when people come into the comments to argue that the…
The community values articulate cleverness, and sometimes folks optimize for this by trying to be more clever than the author of the article under discussion. The easiest way to move community norms is to write the comments you want to see on the site. (I'm trying to be better at this myself.)
You know skepticism is a good thing, but too much of it makes people reluctant to learn and even share things. I just think that an argument is something no one wins. [edit: as arethuza pointed out what I am truly against is cynicism i.e. crab behavior. I know you're wrong because I know what's right and you can't be right because I know I am right. That is exactly the sort of thing that the world doesn't need] So, w…
http://chipberlet.blogspot.com/2005/06/skepticism-or-cynicis...
Interestingly enough if you go onto search yc and check the top submissions ever by karma most of the top comments are what you are looking for more of. The difference there are that some of those posts are defiantly great and don't warrant that level of skepticism.
2) Sometimes there is just less to discuss when you agree with a submission, apart from adding your own piece of anecdotal evidence.
3) It's important to challenge ideas and to be able to call bullshit. People are good at that here.