Even on Hacker News I’d say that the average commenter has very little to add to a discussion (I’m not excluding myself from this, FYI). Especially if the topic being discussed is “news” about a popular company (I’m sure you’ve seen “Facebook bad”, “Apple is locked down and their keyboards suck”, “Google will sunset this”). Technical articles generally get better results but only for topics that aren’t really divisive (“Electron bad”, “C insecure”).

I don’t agree. HN is the only site I go to where I go to the comments first before reading the article. I treat the comments like cliff notes and sometimes there are competing view points which adds to the fervor. I sometimes post links simply because I want to hear more context with discussion.

> I treat the comments like cliff notes and sometimes there are competing view points which adds to the fervor.

They're often the same competing viewpoints, though. Especially on easy to understand, divisive topics.

Sometimes I wish we had a “common knowledge base” with all those points, so that we could move beyond beating the same dead horse, as a community. Any post about JS or C is just dreadful. And I’m completely guilty, myself. :S

I’ve considered writing up things I bring up frequently on my blog so I can just link people to that instead of taking the time to rewrite the same thing over and over…