Yes, every one-off comment on a social news site should be proofread and edited at least 15 times before actually posting it.
Anyway, this sort of comment seems to be the bulk of most replies to comments that do a lot of criticizing here. It is pretty annoying. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if we just kept this sort of thing to ourselves, realizing that nobody is going to use perfect English for a quick post to HN.
> Yes, every one-off comment on a social news site should be proofread and edited at least 15 times before actually posting it.
Actually, yes, every comment should be proofread. Writing that contains typos, or is just inelegantly written, is harder to read and understand. When I write something on HN, it's likely to be read by a hundred or more people. So if I take 100 seconds to get my post right, and that saves each reader 1 second, it's a win overall.
To to otherwise is to proclaim that one is sloppy and careless, and that one's time is more important than others' time.
and that one's time is more important than others' time
I do think this, though.
And anyway, if it costs you one second of time because someone added a space inside the word "playwright", perhaps you need to work on tuning your error correction algorithm. I knew exactly what the OP meant.
Whether or not every comment should be proof-read is up for discussion.
However, comments making wild claims about the writing ability of a recognised leader in the field should be proof-read for obvious spelling disasters. Otherwise, you get what one could call an "epic fail"..
Anyway, this sort of comment seems to be the bulk of most replies to comments that do a lot of criticizing here. It is pretty annoying. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if we just kept this sort of thing to ourselves, realizing that nobody is going to use perfect English for a quick post to HN.