I believe the primary cause of comment degeneration is celebrity. Which is to say the more 'popular' something is the more likely there will be people saying things just to have said something that they are sure someone else has read.
When I was competing on BattleBots I was amazed at how it magnified people's immaturity in their efforts to 'be on TV'. That really made me stop and look at the folks around me on the other teams, and at the show, and there was a very large difference between people who didn't care that they were possibly going to be on TV, and those who mostly cared that they were possibly on TV.
I tend to think of it as the 'celebrity' effect where someone gets their gratification from others noticing them. They troll popular newsgroups (back in the day), they make outrageous comments on community web sites, they seem to be trying desperately to prove somehow, someone, will know they exist. There is a lot of anger there too.
So they come places like here at HN and they comment poorly. They are particularly vocal around topics for which there are no definitive ways of measuring correctness, topics that are more emotion than reason. They are emboldened by anonymity.
Mostly they seem to want to be heard, to know that someone heard them, and ideally to be acknowledged as being heard.
Keeping them isolated, in their brokenness, makes for a better experience the community. But it also makes the broken ones more bitter and angry. I cannot see a way, in an anonymous, or psuedo-anonymous community with little face to face contact, to bring them through their insecurity and into a better place.
When I was competing on BattleBots I was amazed at how it magnified people's immaturity in their efforts to 'be on TV'. That really made me stop and look at the folks around me on the other teams, and at the show, and there was a very large difference between people who didn't care that they were possibly going to be on TV, and those who mostly cared that they were possibly on TV.
I tend to think of it as the 'celebrity' effect where someone gets their gratification from others noticing them. They troll popular newsgroups (back in the day), they make outrageous comments on community web sites, they seem to be trying desperately to prove somehow, someone, will know they exist. There is a lot of anger there too.
So they come places like here at HN and they comment poorly. They are particularly vocal around topics for which there are no definitive ways of measuring correctness, topics that are more emotion than reason. They are emboldened by anonymity.
Mostly they seem to want to be heard, to know that someone heard them, and ideally to be acknowledged as being heard.
Keeping them isolated, in their brokenness, makes for a better experience the community. But it also makes the broken ones more bitter and angry. I cannot see a way, in an anonymous, or psuedo-anonymous community with little face to face contact, to bring them through their insecurity and into a better place.
It is a problem worth solving though.