Good question. Feels like there's two Qs in there: 1) when is long-form better than short form, 2) why write about problems at all?

2. Why write at all: consensus drives policy change, and information drives consensus. Writing, of any length, assembles information, bundles it into an argument, and (if the argument lands) becomes a 'capsule' around which consensus can form.

1. Why long form: room for nuance and research. Long form can include different perspectives (including stripe's -- perhaps they have a reason for these practices). It can address questions like 'what % of the industry behaves this way, what are the downsides to the banks' approach'. The interview + editing process can tease out anecdotes that sharpen the argument, or uncover new aspects of the problem.

This part is selfish, but for the writer, long form lets you improve your own knowledge of the topic, and your ability to make arguments around it.

Ok, I thought you meant publishing the same text as in the comment, but as a blog post. So what you actually meant was “please expand on this in longer form”. So “blog” not necessarily as a publishing medium, but as a genre of text.

I've literally never seen a link to an HN comment go viral on social media, such that my non-HN friends would read it. It happens for blog/medium/substack posts all the time.

> I've literally never seen a link to an HN comment go viral on social media

I've never thought about this, but now that you've pointed it out, I'm realizing this is genuinely a fantastic feature.

Sounds like yet another of the many perks of the spartan design here. All substance, with just a hint of (cascading) style.

But for what reason? The styling?

Definitely. HN is suspiciously devoid images. To most people on the internet in 2022 that alone makes it wholly uninteresting.

I often wonder how the site survives without sticky autoplay videos popping up halfway down the page and covering 80% of the content...

Surely it's due to the mobile application that HN is always pushing. And the invasive tracking. And the paywall. And the ads, the ads go without saying.

The ads keep HN alive. But because each one only needs to sell "one product" (the job they're hiring for) nobody hardly notices them.

It uses images for the upvote/downvote arrows, the Y in the header, and the spacer gifs in the table layout (yes, HN uses table layouts)

HN reads like grumpy old tech and finance guys in Dockers pants and Alligator t-shirts stuck in 2000.

They're alligator polos, you rugrat!

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a blog post has an easier time gaining traction than a HN comment outside of HN users.

How, other than SEO? If you want to share a link to it, you already can.

More that you can go deeper in context / detail, with images, styling, better links

Rich-embeds in social media/communications platforms, mostly. Simply taking up more space in a Discord/Slack/Teams/$SOCIAL channel with a bold title, an excerpt, and an image adds visibility, context and is more interesting to the viewer.

A link to an HN thread is opaque, uninteresting, and context-less.

Name a blog post that has stuck with you because you learned something useful. Could you search for it and find it easily? Now do the same for an HN comment.

I'm pretty confident I could find any HN post that I remember with the search box at the bottom, or by googling it with site:news.ycombinator.com.

With, half of the blogs that I liked I can't remember the name of the blog, it's probably either been dropped from search engine indexes for being older than a year or two or pushed to the 10th page by better SEO, or the site has simply vanished.

OK, I have little doubt that many readers of HN could find something here, but I think that for the vast majority of people finding a blog post will be a lot easier than an HN post. Styling will be an obvious advantage, you will be able to take a very quick look at a blog post and be able to remember if it's what approximately you saw before or not. You will need to read at least partially through an HN post to gather if it is the wrong one and reject it.

That’s usually easy using Algolia when you have sufficiently unique search terms, but otherwise that’s what I meant by SEO. Any other reasons?

People outside of HN are more likely to click on and read a link to a blog post than a link to a random HN comment.

A blog post also feels more trustworthy than a random social media site comment.

Shocking, I know.

More detail?