I do think they could sometimes be more nicely phrased, taking into account that the author of the post being commented on will often read the critical comments, as opposed to only third party readers.

But generally I agree, as a reader the critical comments are often the more useful ones. Shortcomings of a post, pointers to existing products that already do what a given product does better (or at least differently), etc. are all useful things to know, even if I don't always agree with them. Whereas congratulations and statements of agreement are rarely that informative, unless they come with additional information expanding on the original post.

Part of the trickiness, imo, is that HN comments occupy an odd in-between space, between blog comments (which are clearly responding to the author on their own blog), and third-party mailing-list discussions about an article from outside the mailing list (which are typically not addressed to the author, and are for the benefit of the discussants).

The collapsing comments feature, of the chrome extension I use, has also helped me actually read through comments without getting side-tracked with endless pedantic debates. You can find a lot of good perspectives below the first thread.

Which extension is that? This sounds like a great feature. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a lower comment is a new thread or part of the same one.

Right now I'm using HackerNew [1], made by tommoor.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...