In the age of twitter, you expect paragraphs? Your comment is longer than a lot of news coverage, or at least, what passes as news coverage these days. You can try to be the change you want to see in the world, but this is like arguing with a fence post. As the audience becomes predominately younger, the trends of the times will come with them. You can "educate" till you're blue in the face, but being the internet, it's not going to listen.
Because in my experience a large portion of the HN crowd comes here for the civil and nuanced debate.
> To a first approximation, the internet is wrong about everything anyhow, so for sanity's sake we all need to learn how to let go. Believe me, I know that's not easy, but it's what we all have to do if we want a forum that doesn't suck.
It's about a personal insult in that thread, but I think it can be extrapolated to comment length. I agree that many news coverage are bad, or just a copy&paste of the press release. It's difficult to change the world, but at least we can try to have a nice discussion here. And part of the trick to get a nice discussion is to encourage comments of the correct length, not too short, not too long.
** Try to avoid insults like
fake quote> They are a bunch of liars _or_ morons
in spite you think they are a bunch of liars _and_ morons
** Avoid oneliners
Try to expand the explanation to 3 or 5 paragraph. Explain clearly what they did, what they claim and the difference. I try to use a ELI25 level (the reader has a technical degree, but not in the subject).
** Explain if it break some physics rule
Some articles make claims that break a physic rule. Some even give a wrong explanation about how they are somehow not bounded by the rule. Explain what they are breaking it. Try to give a high level explanation (like it breaks the conservation of energy) and a low level explanation (exactly in which part they are miscounting the energy).
** Expect to make a few mistakes.
I always make a mistake in a detail. Luckily most of the time someone will make make a comment fixing it. Acknowledge the error, thanks the comment, and remember it
** If it's bad enough it will be reposted :(
The good part, is that you can reuse your comment, with all the fix contributed by other users, and perhaps improve it a little.