I've noticed this with my comments too. My hypothesis is that if a person wants to optimise comments for upvotes, they need to be quick one liners because the discussion and therefore the eyeballs move on very quickly. If you write a high quality comment it takes time but less people read it because the top of the bell curve of the huge wave of eyeballs following the stream of the discussion has passed it by.
Humans are social, we have a need for acknowledgment from our peers so we can measure or opinions against others and to help develop our thinking on a particular point. As you suggest above, karma points are a crude replacement for the nods of agreement that you would get in a face to face conversation that signify that you or I are saying something interesting. It's a not a nice feeling to think you are saying something interesting only to find you are talking to yourself. Therefore, there is a strong incentive towards pithy one line comments that get seen quickly and appeal to the masses.
The trouble with karma points is there is no differentiation between the nods you get in drunken agreement from your friends when you say something funny in a bar and the nods you get from your colleagues when you say something insightful. We would value these differently in a face to face situation. On the internet it's just a competition for generic human recongition points where the short fast comments that 'press peoples buttons' are at an advantage.
The trouble with pithy one line comments that press peoples buttons is that they are hard to get right, not many people can strike the right balance. What's meant to be a pithy one liner actually just ends up saying nothing, something offensive, illogical or merely just voicing tribal agreement with Apple or Google or whatever.
Maybe it would be better to be able to see other peoples upvotes but not out own? What about a mandatory 1 hour before a comment appears, perhaps just display a '...' to signify that someone is preparing an answer? I don't know what the answer is, but I also miss the more challenging technical articles.
That's s disappointing. I usually spend less time on one liners than anything and thought everyone else did the same. I had no idea that one-liners got so much attention. But for all the people who express sentiments like yours and all the people who read it and all the people priding themselves on being the smartest people in the room, somehow stupidity still slips by under our noses. How? And, just as a hypothetical, you can find a comment much like yours then look back through that person's history and see they're a chronic fluff contributor. How is it that we know not to do something, speak out against it, and then do it anyway?
Also, I don't like your proposed solution. It assumes the worst in people. I tend to believe that if you cater to the lowest common denominator then that's what you get but when you assume the best in people they'll try to live up to that expectation. Of course people will be people and it's inevitable they we disappoint from time to time but... Well, but nothing. That's how it goes I guess.
Did you mean you spend less time on reading one liners? Yes me too, but there are lots of one liners now and not so many well written comments.
Regarding your second point. At the scale of HN now, I think we have to consider people not as individuals but as a swarm of actors; perhaps analogous to particles in a CFD analysis. Then ask the question 'what design changes need to be made to change the direction of these actors'. I don't personally assume the worst in people but I don't think people are naturally moral actors. They won't 'do the right thing' without any incentives. People are driven by the positive and negative consequences of their actions which they measure from the reactions of their peers. In the case of HN our peers are the crowd sourced 'off the cuff' opinions of a random sample of a few hundred thousand random people. Some people are horrified by the idea that morals don't exist and it is a bit of a scary concept being surrounded by potential monsters, but really I think it's just nature and lots of natural things are scary but can be mitigated by design.
Humans are social, we have a need for acknowledgment from our peers so we can measure or opinions against others and to help develop our thinking on a particular point. As you suggest above, karma points are a crude replacement for the nods of agreement that you would get in a face to face conversation that signify that you or I are saying something interesting. It's a not a nice feeling to think you are saying something interesting only to find you are talking to yourself. Therefore, there is a strong incentive towards pithy one line comments that get seen quickly and appeal to the masses.
The trouble with karma points is there is no differentiation between the nods you get in drunken agreement from your friends when you say something funny in a bar and the nods you get from your colleagues when you say something insightful. We would value these differently in a face to face situation. On the internet it's just a competition for generic human recongition points where the short fast comments that 'press peoples buttons' are at an advantage.
The trouble with pithy one line comments that press peoples buttons is that they are hard to get right, not many people can strike the right balance. What's meant to be a pithy one liner actually just ends up saying nothing, something offensive, illogical or merely just voicing tribal agreement with Apple or Google or whatever.
Maybe it would be better to be able to see other peoples upvotes but not out own? What about a mandatory 1 hour before a comment appears, perhaps just display a '...' to signify that someone is preparing an answer? I don't know what the answer is, but I also miss the more challenging technical articles.