A great example of this is the fact that when I read your post I was reminded of my biggest complaint about HN and was about to write what that is. It’s very hard to stay on point. Here’s an example of a type of interaction that illustrates this.

There are a number of times that I’ve responded to someone to point out what I think is an error. People will then assume what my opinion on the topic is and comment. My comment, logically speaking, didn’t imply any beliefs on my part. I just pointed out something that is wrong. But we sometimes tend to make assumptions on what someone says about that person based on past interactions or media influence. And then things start to deviate.

I don’t think anything can be done about this. I think it would make HN too sterile if something were done about it. This phenomenon is part of us being social beings.

Yes, that's exactly what I am questioning. Why does it have to be exactly the same when we are online, as opposed to being in person?

A submitted article, opinion piece (or news, etc, anywhere) is almost always on a particular topic or main idea. Who would consistently and daily read an author who goes all over in his/her thinking on any given article? There is almost always a "point" of any given article and the submitted story. Why then the comment stream goes all over?

> I don’t think anything can be done about this.

Well I don't know if I agree entirely. If nothing else, people can stay silent if they don't necessarily have anything in particular to say about the topic at hand (expert or somewhat expert opinion or additional info). Staying silent wouldn't necessarily lead things to 'too sterile'. This can possibly be achieved by being cognizant and conscious.

I don't find it so.

If any given post/article can stay on specific topic (which it most certainly does almost all the time) then why can’t the collective group of people do the same, particularly when the technology is specifically designed to achieve that goal?

I reject the premise that "the technology is specifically designed to achieve that goal". I believe a good conversation does branch out and lead one into a myriad to topics, where those topics relate back to the primary topic.

If conversations here were routinely jumping to something completely unrelated, then I could see your point. But I don't feel like I see that, at least not in the conversations I participate in.

> I believe a good conversation does branch out and lead one into a myriad to topics

If you look at this from your personal/individual perspective, then yes, that's no issue. But look at it from the perspective of the platform and the audience as a collective whole. The "branching out" leads to reduction in quality for everyone (may not necessarily so for one or two people who are engaged on the branched out topic). People who are not engaged, may not necessarily achieve anything if there are tons of branches under one topic.

And it's a fundamental aspect of the threaded nature of the forum that comments deviate from the central topic and become more narrowly focused and relevant to fewer posters as a branch diverges. I supposed if they switched to a purely linear format, where every comment was explicitly to the OP, then that might focus threads more, but they would also be less interesting.

But why 'less interesting' when comments are meant to be explicit to the OP?

Wouldn't the fact that there are ample opportunities to post diverse topics through multiple individual posts, provides even more ample opportunities to comment in-context on each one of them individually?

Contrast this to an offline world scenario, where let's say, you are in a setting with limited time on your hand. Your conversation (on any given topics) will start and end at some point because you are not going to be around together for long. In such offline contexts, you naturally may have various continuous topics to discuss and it is fine if things diverge.

But online, you technically do not have such time restrictions. Plus, you have a platform which facilitates contextual discussions which can stay neat and tidy. My argument here is, that we tend to not take advantage of the real value of the online forums (by being all over, as if we are not going to get the second opportunity).

I tend to think that the concise comments online, on an exact topic at hand, provide collective value, as opposed to diverged sentences or two. This does not mean that 100 people would write counter-article and/or dissertation on the OP (that would really be boring for sure). But instead of 100 short and diverged comments, 5 focused comments (counter, etc) are better overall in providing better value for the time.

I don't at all share your assumption that quality=strictly on topic.

>Doesn’t this render the value of comments useless?

Do you think it does? Well..I guess you're in a very small minority there.

Maybe start a new site where there's a penalty for commenting off-topic? You can be the judge of that - I suppose someone will have to be.

If someone comments more generally, philosophically, 'a level up', is that off-topic? If someone comments on one tiny part of the topic, is that off-topic? I suspect one person's off-topic is another's insightful comment.

I'd provide a comment back to your comment here but two of your first sentences fall into the category of ... not providing any direct value to my original comment. In your first comment you disagree with me. Fine. In your second comment, you are asking a question to a question, and then you judge me back. There's nothing I can say about this.

WRT to your third sentence/paragraph, about ..

> If someone comments more generally, philosophically, 'a level up', is that off-topic? If someone comments on one tiny part of the topic, is that off-topic? I suspect one person's off-topic is another's insightful comment.

I agree with you above. It is a subjective matter for sure. But you probably missed my point about this question asked as collective whole. If you look at things individually, then yes, it makes sense what you're saying. But I am asking this question from the collective-whole perspective. It isn't about one or two person. It is about everyone, looking at things from the platform's perspective. I tend to think, all comments (short form or long form) if they are on topic, provide value to the post at hand.

Well, I was saying "You are making an assumption here that I don't think is justified. Anecdata: I for one don't believe it." The way you were writing, you didn't seem to realize you were making that assumption, but that it was the plain truth, so I was letting you know.

>In your second comment, you are asking a question to a question

Your question seemed to be rhetorical, i.e. you were assuming that being off-topic renders comments valueless. If it wasn't rhetorical - No, I really don't think "off-topic" comments are valueless. (Besides that being not a clear-cut category, value on one side of the line, valueless on the other)

>all comments (short form or long form) if they are on topic, provide value to the post at hand.

Well, that's doesn't seem tru either - quite a few are downvoted and flagged for being abhorrent, or devoid of value etc. Maybe you get value from each and every on-topic comment. But that's different from what you were saying earlier, which is assuming that quality=on-topic and off-topic=valueless, and asking what to do about that problem. I was questioning your assumptions, because they don't sound right to me. (e.g. The only good response to "What do we do about the aliens making crop circles?" is to question the assumptions made.)

And how do you even decide what's on topic and what's not? Is pointing out some flaw of some pattern on topic for an article that says "this pattern has this great advantage", or is only that advantage and its greatness on topic? I'm pretty sure the perceived width of any topic varies between readers, so others might not consider that same things off topic that you do.

> And how do you even decide what's on topic and what's not?

Good point. But in general, one can sense an overall picture emerge out of a comment stream. As you scroll and read comments, you can tell when the stream provides value or not. My point here is, that when people do not stay consistent to the original topic, the value of the comment stream goes down. And here, I'm not talking about comments being totally out of context of any given original topic. Even a slight divergence leads to unnecessary path down the road.

The value of comments are very subjective. To you, they might not be valuable, to me they might be (depending on my mood, maybe).

When talking about things, especially with people you don't know and without all the non-verbal side-info, you'll often have to agree on what you actually mean with some term you're using, and off you go from an article about any topic to a discussion of not-really-related things.

I don't have the impression that people just jump to very off topic things, but then again, you might be reading totally different submissions on HN based on your interests vs what I click on. Maybe if you gave some examples of low-value off-topic-discussions, it'd be clearer.

Or, another example may be. It has been consistent, that whenever a thread starts up about any given password managers, the discussion right away diverge to myriad of other password generators. Back in the days, it used to be about bookmarks managers.

I agree that this is a subjective topic in itself. My main concern is that as the number of people commenting gets large, the value being derived out of any post, gets challenging. My argument here is, that this should have been potentially managed better online.