With all this talk about the decline in comment quality lately on HN, I thought it would be helpful to collect some data on what people think the specific qualities are of good/bad comments.
Here's what I'm looking for:
1. Positive and negative qualities are both useful (but neutral is meh, don't bother).
2. Ranking your qualities would be very helpful but optional. (1. helpful, 2. organized, 3. etc...)
3. Explaining your choices is appreciated (and will keep things interesting).
4. Everyone doesn't need to agree, in fact, I am more interested in the differences for my analysis (variety is good).
5. Bonus points for meta comments that have the qualities they list. (meta)
I'll tally up votes for comments too but it'll have to wait till pg reverts the system back or passes along the data some other way. Hopefully this data will be useful for making HN even better.
Thanks for everyone's help!
And if I left it there, I'd rate my own comment poorly (#2, below). So, now I'll try to be serious:
1. Comments I consider to be high value tend to reference external sources (other websites or authorities), which tends to create a minimal sort of empirical grounding. External links that add information to a topic are valuable. I.e., new information usually == good.
2. One liners, quips, etc... tend to be low value.
3. Many other values are subjective. Clear, punchy writing adds value, as does insightful analysis, but what counts as "clear" or "insightful" varies by the reader.
4. I personally have a bias towards ideas that are new to me; at least then, I feel I've learned something. But again, new != good, necessarily.
5. IMHO, the worst sorts of comments cluster in the most controversial sorts of threads. E.g., anything political or mired in non empirical sorts of value judgments[1]. See PG's essay "Keep Your Identity Small": http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html. If I were to wager, I'd bet that the reason comment quality has been perceived to decline is mostly a function of the increased number of such threads.
[1] I personally find these interesting, because I enjoy debating philosophy & politics. But I'm also guessing that these things aren't so highly valued here.