Anecdata, but I'm a typical lurker. If I don't have something to contribute to a discussion, I stay silent. I think that goes for a lot of people. There's also the commitment angle - if you engage in a discussion, you're typically committed to follow up on the responses you get. That can be more of a time/attention commitment than people are interested in, and with the growing toxicity of online discourse a lot of people don't want to put themselves out there to begin with.

There's also your attention surface. I typically read threads/posts from a variety of communities, but might prefer to reply only on some, and lurk on the others. I'm sure this is true for a lot of people, from anecdotes I've heard.

Yep. If it's about programming, game design, board games, video games, writing, I'll feel confident I have something to say and/or want to contribute. But I also read discussion about music composition, hiking, art, diy, history, philosophy, etc, and I would almost never post in those subjects (at least not at this point in time), as those aren't my focus, just other subjects I'm curious about.

Yes, there are few subjects in which I am proficient enough to contribute.

"Commitment" to a discussion is optional. It's perfectly reasonable to give your point of view, and come back a few days later to see if there were any interesting replies.

Depends on the forum. HN emphasises that, by not notifying users that they had replies. Reddit on the other hand colours your mailbox in red so you're aware of replies without actively seeking them.

I don't know which foster the best quality discussions, but I feel the HN way is a bit impersonal.

A trick I finally hit on for Reddit a couple of years ago was that when I start feeling a discussion does not feel fun or interesting anymore, I look away while I click on the inbox icon.

When I don't see the replies, they're easy to ignore.

At some point (I have no idea when), Reddit also added a "disable inbox replies" button to comments, so that you can prevent notifications on a comment by comment basis.

Why is it set up like that on HN?

I have no idea. Perhaps they want to avoid discussions form derailing? Reddit routinely has long sub-threads, but they're hidden behind a link by default.

I agree with your statement. It also adds a lot of bulk, with little substance if everyone chimes in with their own version of a post they agree with.

I've been lurking on Hacker News for (at least) two years before deciding to participate: I would visit the homepage daily, read some interesting news and comments, and finally leave the site.

It's pointless to comment if one cannot add new information, perspectives, arguments, or humors to the thread, as a result, one really needs to make an effort to engage in the discussion. In practice, it means you'll need a proper keyboard, and a fast Internet connection to search for references. At least, at there, or at Reddit, or even at 4chan, this principle applies. I mean, you can make pointless comments, but you'll lower the SNR of the entire community, or your comment will be ignored or filtered on 4chan, or downvoted (or not getting votes) on HN/Reddit/Slashdot.

There are other places where the barrier-of-entry is lower, like the comments section below the stories on "ordinary" news websites (not HN), etc, but make an comment is even more pointless.

I guess the best counterexample I can think of is Twitter. It's no more than 140 chars and highly personal, so making a knee-jerk comment is common, and you can use a mobile phone instead of a proper computer to do so.

exactly

I think it's mostly a psychological barrier in most respects. There's also no necessity to comment - lurking, despite the quite awful name we've given the behaviour, is a perfectly normal thing to do. Plenty of people read books who don't write them, etc.

I'd also presume (and it is a presumption!) that people who are commenting on one platform will likely also to be commenting on another. As in, I would presume they would establish a conversation as the preferred method of internet discourse they digest, as opposed to a one way consumption of data.

This also gives me an opportunity to use one of my favourite Cronenberg quotes: "The monologue is his preferred method of discourse" - Videodrome

> There's also no necessity to comment - lurking, despite the quite awful name we've given the behaviour

This is especially true if the content itself gives authoritative or complete information about something, as Warnock's dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warnock%27s_dilemma) described:

""" The problem with no response is that there are five possible interpretations:

* The post is correct, well-written information that needs no follow-up commentary. There's nothing more to say except "Yeah, what he said."

* The post is complete and utter nonsense, and no one wants to waste the energy or bandwidth to even point this out.

* No one read the post, for whatever reason.

* No one understood the post, but won't ask for clarification, for whatever reason.

* No one cares about the post, for whatever reason.

— Bryan C. Warnock """

In this way, I think the voting system became popular, not only because it's usable a mechanism to select interesting information, but also gives an important feedback to encourage the poster, same for the "Like" button. However, they has their own problems.

That's not true -- I comment on HN but lurk everywhere else. The reason for this is, first, time commitment (I can really only be part of one online community at a time, although I do read other forums on occasion), and, second, I find discussions here more civil, comments more relevant, and emotions less charged than on other platforms.

In truth the polarizing of the Internet is causing a lot of us to be lurkers who may have things to say but do not want to engage in emotional content with strangers, because everything is interpreted so emotionally these days.

Related: "The best response is no response."—Dr. Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics"

I find it's mostly that posting a comment is very different from entering into discussion. There is a surprising amount of friction attached to entering into a discussion on the web, compared to just lobbing a comment onto a page (like I'm doing right now). Throw in point scoring to comments, and you've created a system that just doesn't appeal to the majority of people.

You get publicly scored on your contributions to the discussion. Most people are turned off by the idea of discussions being adversarial, point scoring, confrontational.

And in that respect, I consider the barriers to comment contribution to be very high indeed.

The barriers only seem low to those people who've already passed them.

But I remember teenage me, over 20 years ago, being very reserved about writing online because I considered my grammar too bad and I didn't want to embarrass myself.

And back then there wasn't even anything social media, where blunders like that could lead straight back to "real" me, the whole idea still made me anxious.

Can't even begin to imagine how teenagers these days must feel with social media being literally everywhere and recording pretty much everything they write for the foreseeable future.

At least nowadays they have access to some pretty good grammar correction tools ;)

I know of some friends who are lurking on HN, but feel like the have nothing valuable to contribute to most discussions. So they just read the comments without feeling comfortable enough to interact with them.

Maybe out of fear of saying something wrong and getting debated on it - though it's quite civilized here. They might have seen too much of other websites where things turn less civil :)

Time is a big factor: usually I can only spend some 30 minutes per day for HN/reddit, barely enough to only have a look at a few of the interesting posts, let alone contributing. I feel like you need to be willing to commit a meaningful part of your time to internet communities to contribute frequently.

Bit of a different perspective : I mostly read HN on my phone, and I find it hard and time consuming to write non-trivial, thoughtful comments on a phone. It takes several times longer than it would with a proper keyboard. So I don't bother posting and mostly just lurk.

Same with my blog: there are perhaps 40 people who actually comment vs thousands whose presence is subliminal.

lurking = reading.

Most people (who can) read. That's a lower effort (and most of the time sufficient) than writing.

Maybe more of us should apply the following before speaking up:

* is it true?

* is it necessary?

* is it kind?