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 they don't agree, they see that there is already a comment that says essentially what they want to say so they upvote it.
The newest type of default comment that we're starting to see is the "disarming comment". On reddit this showed up as pun threads. I'm not sure exactly the form they will ultimately take here, but they're usually pretty highly rated as well. In any contentious thread there will be supporters by way of upvotes, detractors by way of the critical / skeptical comments, and people who attempt to make peace with comments that are either light-hearted or attempt to be conciliatory.
It's not just an HN thing though. Any community has these sorts of behaviors. It's just that there isn't a default way for someone to register their disagreement in the same numbers of ways there are for them to register their agreements; especially since comments that do nothing more than agree whole-heartedly with the submission and add nothing new to the conversation tend to stagnate or get downvoted.
I've found that the skeptical comments are a pleasant side effect of the lack of a down vote button.
HN seems to be a fairly scientifically minded community and, as such, wants proof to verify claims. The skeptical comments can be a good filter for the hype that seems to end up in all kinds of articles.
I've always thought HNers were one of the toughest audiences on the internet, and that's why I keep coming back. There are so many bright people who have the energy to research and verify claims, I stand a chance at getting to the truth.
I also know that this is a good community to discuss startup ideas and projects with, because I know I'll get a straight answer. Hopefully I can provide my own healthy dose of skepticism and constructive criticism to the mix.
My only question is: you mentioned positive comments, negative comments and people who are conciliatory or funny. Apart from the trollish/provocative stuff that ends up downmodded, what have you left out?
Not sure if it's clear what I am asking. At first it seems like you pretty much included every possible comments. So I was wondering if you could be a little bit more specific. In particular what sort of comments do you _not_ see?
There are certainly many other types of comments here. There are many informative comments on most HN submissions, they usually carry a slight skew to either support or oppose the submission. There are comments that provide additional context to submissions – those usually do quite well.
The “tribes” metaphor fits pretty well with regards to online communities (including HN). HN as a whole values information, both factual and opinionated – as long as the facts have a solid foundation in reason.
Since the economy of this tribe is powered by knowledge, most of the comments that survive are related to determining the value of any given piece of information. An upvote on a story says that it’s worth something. A comment that disagrees says it’s worth less. There are plenty of comments from people trying to determine what the value of the information is from their perspective.
There are a growing number of meta-comments, especially on submissions of questionable relevance or quality. A comment that says “Hacker News?” calls into question how much the submitter actually belongs here. As with other tribes, a constant state of tribal / endemic warfare is present. Refugees are rarely well accepted into existing communities, HN is no different. The “Eternal September” problem is a nicer way of saying a place is being overrun by refugees. A common insult here is “this isn’t reddit”. On reddit, a common insult is “this isn’t Digg” and on Digg, “this isn’t Fark”. It’s not that there is a hierarchy of quality in a series of sites, comments like that exist to point out that someone’s comment (and by extension the commenter) don’t belong here. Pointing out someone’s “otherness” is a diversionary tactic that has existed long before the internet.
I do find a great deal of humor in the “this isn’t reddit” comments, because reddit has a pretty elegant solution to the fact that humans coalesce into tribes – subreddits. It’s significantly easier to recognize other commenters in a subreddit because there are fewer people to recognize. Many of the people that lament the state of HN often mean that they don’t recognize the people making the submissions and comments. I believe that it’s the state of like-mindedness that people are attracted to; not a state of unified agreement or disagreement on a topic. With a smaller set of contributors, the question of “what has value?” is much clearer, the community can then focus on the merit of any given contribution. As a community grows, the idea of what values are espoused by the community become much more murky and it becomes difficult to assess the worth of any given comment or submission.
This has become much more lengthy than I intended it to be; I suppose I could have just said “there are many types of comments on any site, the ones that tend to do well are the ones that help others accurately assess the value of the topic under discussion”. Of course, my point may have been missed if I had just said that ;)
You can't downvote direct replies, and icey's comment is a direct reply to your post. You should be able to downvote a grandchild, if you have sufficient karma.
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 they don't agree, they see that there is already a comment that says essentially what they want to say so they upvote it.
The newest type of default comment that we're starting to see is the "disarming comment". On reddit this showed up as pun threads. I'm not sure exactly the form they will ultimately take here, but they're usually pretty highly rated as well. In any contentious thread there will be supporters by way of upvotes, detractors by way of the critical / skeptical comments, and people who attempt to make peace with comments that are either light-hearted or attempt to be conciliatory.
It's not just an HN thing though. Any community has these sorts of behaviors. It's just that there isn't a default way for someone to register their disagreement in the same numbers of ways there are for them to register their agreements; especially since comments that do nothing more than agree whole-heartedly with the submission and add nothing new to the conversation tend to stagnate or get downvoted.