Why is the HN comments section no better than Fox News or NYT?

Question

The amount of speculation with regards to topics usually about race, gender, and politics but sometimes even science and programming among &ldquo;engineers&rdquo; and &ldquo;innovators&rdquo; is kind of amazing.The HN community appears to be no more rational or evidence-based than those found in the comments section of Fox News or the New York Times.Example comments found here:- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25229544- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24149352- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23983974- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23696427It&rsquo;s all conjecture and anecdotes. Rarely will someone take the time to research and post links to evidence to improve the conversation.1. What hope do we have if creators and maintainers are prone to the same proclivities as the users?2. What can HN do to make not only it&rsquo;s commenting section better but also improve the quality of commenting on the interwebs? Why?

kkoncevicius · Accepted Answer

HN is working fine; different sub-groups segregate under different topics. People who care about Rust comment under threads about Rust, people who care about science-fiction post comments in threads about science-fiction. And people who care about politics post under threads about politics.Then the question of "why threads about politics usually have lower quality of comments" is left as an exercise for the reader.

sigmaprimus · Answer

Now that You have provided examples of what You don't want.
Could You provide examples of any online community with a comments section that is more of what You consider better?
Or is this just a rant in the form of a question? (Which is ok, just want to make this a more rationale, evidence based discussion)

gus_massa · Answer

I took a look at the posts:453 points | 548 comments558 points | 774 comments169 points | 300 comments218 points | 510 commentsAs a recommendation, try to avoid the comment section it post were the number of comments is greater than the number of upvotes.

chaganated · Answer

I think the inescapable problem is that this is someone else's heavily moderated (automatically and manually) forum, not a blog or a bulletin board.
A thorough well-sourced reply is just as likely to get downvoted/flagged/grayed-out over a disagreement as a low-effort one. With those dynamics, most people aren't going to bother with an effortpost.
Personally, I miss the old bulletin boards. The upvote/downvote approach has become a groupthink amplifier, and this is even more pernicious when unpopular-yet-civil opinions are disappeared.