One of the things I've learned on HN is that if a comment can be misunderstood, it will be. So if you post insightful, brief comment A, you can count on getting replies B,C,E,E, and F that completely miss the point.

This leads me to believe that some -- perhaps not the majority, but some -- of the comments here that we consider snarky or noise might actually be pretty good comments, we just misread them. And then respond.

In my own experience I have found when I am tired or not mentally functioning very well I tend to misread the intention of comments. Assuming this holds true in the larger community, there may not be a way to fix the extra problem I bring up. Or any of these related problems, for that matter.

I mention that to say this: the community can only go so far talking about a topic in any direction without a lot of emotional push-back starting up, and emotions win over logic. So if the subject is "businesses that sell to poor people," at some point, somebody is going to start making a case that businesses shouldn't be allowed to "exploit" poor people. Those folks are not being snarky; to them they are simply making a stand that needs to be made when the subject has gone off the rails. Likewise, if the subject is "writing your own OS to make a fortune," at some point somebody is going to start beating the F/OSS drums. If somebody posts yet another "Young inventor conquers known universe" stories, somebody is going to point out the trope.

These folks are not trying to be snarky or trolling. They are simply trying to provide useful feedback. But comments like this have a tendency to snowball. Once you let one comment in that says something like "enough with the young kid inventor stories that are overhyped!" then the next commenter feels like he has to out-do the first. And a lousy thread is born. If you do not let these comments in, then you are saying you want a board where people must react to content in a completely non-emotional fashion. That's not going to work either. In the terrible example of the deceased programmer, probably 2 or 3 percent of the audience did not feel sympathy for the story. Out of that bunch, maybe only 2 or 3 percent felt the need (?) to express criticism. But in a community the size of HN, that's enough. Once those comments were put out, the rest of those folks who felt little sympathy were empowered to go along with the thread, drawing in fence-sitters in the process. After all, they were simply being dispassionate! That's what we ask for when we deride most bad comments, right?

All abstractions are leaky, and language is very slippery. With tens of thousands of readers, written comments and articles simply are too leaky to scale.

So we have yet another terrible example of HNers performing poorly. I don't have an answer. What we see is mob behavior at work, the human social animal. Written communication is much different than vocal communication, but we naturally try to use them both the same way. We are performing as designed. It's probably a feature, not a bug. :)

EDIT: Please don't take this as an apologia for poor commenting or what happened yesterday, just my attempt at explanation. One of the worst comments I ever made was in reply to a long-time HN'er who was basically asking "Why are you loading up my HN feed with this useless obituary crap?" when somebody posted about a somewhat famous person passing away. I told them to shut their pie-hole. And I'd write that comment again in a heartbeat.