> "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.
It might be worth pointing out that you are dismissing a comment discussing a page that is (likely) making a criticism of the HN rules by implying - without good reason - that it is instead a criticism of the community, and not a critique of the site rules and the kinds of content it promotes.
Unless you're only meaning the "don't sneer" part - which is difficult to police among intellectuals, and if it's only policed at HN-directed criticism, is probably bad form.
In short: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
I'm sorry but I don't really follow what you're saying here. That the GP comment was a supercilious putdown seems completely obvious to me. Perceptions differ, of course.
There are some real gems & genuine insight to be found. But the comments still follow a Pareto distribution and there's a lot that is worth disdain[1], IMO.
Besides, I found it's better when I don't take HN too seriously; I now often enjoy HN the way I "enjoy" Curb Your Enthusiasm
1. Often as a top comment too! A lot of inaccurate, stripped-of-nuance or outright ignorant hot takes get voted up if they confirm the biases of the majority of HN users.
The problem with comments like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30088471 is that they poison the ecosystem with more of the very thing you're complaining about, plus they lower the signal/noise ratio with tedious meta.
Supercilious posturing over other people is bad for comments here because it's reliably uninteresting. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site more in the intended spirit? We're trying for curious conversation here.
