- Herding people seems to be a very difficult problem, but on the other hand i am not aware of scientific approaches to it. There's only assumptions that things like karma, upvotes, reputation increase the likelihood of a comment being useful. Can anyone point to relevant literature?
- In the end, i don't think it's possible to stop people from commenting, people just feel the need add a comment when they have read an interesting post (Just like this very comment in fact). Having a rule that says not to means nothing. Having your comment under an interesting topic is a modern way to say "Hey that caught my interest and i think i should participate in the group that discusses this topic, even though i don't have anything insightful to say". It's mostly an emotional reaction.
- As this is a threaded discussion, many people will post just to start a conversation (because they want to spark that conversation), or even start an argument.
- IMHO, the quality of the comments is directly related to the quality of the frontpage links. HN frontpage is heavily moderated that's why it's (for me at least) the best internet frontpage for technically-minded people. Not having a financial incentive is a big plus as administrators dont have to worry about readership.
- As a consequence of the frontpage quality, people who want to waste time don't stay long enough to add comments. Otherwise, i don't think there's anything special about the comment section here.
True about the threaded discussions, i always felt threaded conversations lead to worse quality discussions. Mostly because of the "argument"-thing. I don't think people intentionally want to start an argument many times but since you are always replying directly to someone it can easily be perceived as offensive or defensive even if you are just adding another neutral fact into the conversation.
Actually "conversation" sounds wrong, because there is no conversation or even common red-line of discussion, just replies to individual comments changing order several times per day based on some rating instead of time. Try returning to a threaded conversation a day after you first read it, you will have to reread almost everything again to get back into the loop again.
Flat comment system can also deteriorate quickly when you reach enough users and everything is just lost into a stream of junk like on youtube. I think stackoverflow has a good model with only one level of threading, not sure how well it would work on a discussion forum without strictly right or wrong answers though.
- In the end, i don't think it's possible to stop people from commenting, people just feel the need add a comment when they have read an interesting post (Just like this very comment in fact). Having a rule that says not to means nothing. Having your comment under an interesting topic is a modern way to say "Hey that caught my interest and i think i should participate in the group that discusses this topic, even though i don't have anything insightful to say". It's mostly an emotional reaction.
- As this is a threaded discussion, many people will post just to start a conversation (because they want to spark that conversation), or even start an argument.
- IMHO, the quality of the comments is directly related to the quality of the frontpage links. HN frontpage is heavily moderated that's why it's (for me at least) the best internet frontpage for technically-minded people. Not having a financial incentive is a big plus as administrators dont have to worry about readership.
- As a consequence of the frontpage quality, people who want to waste time don't stay long enough to add comments. Otherwise, i don't think there's anything special about the comment section here.