[EGreg]

Why is the top comment on HN nearly always a "saw X, said no thanks, didn't even check out the main part of what you built" comment?

It doesn't help those who actually (unlike you) did not consider X to be a dealbreaker, interacted with the actual service and now want to discuss the other parts. And those who haven't interacted with it want to know about the meat of the product and how well it does what it does, not the superficial color of the bike shed out front. We have to scroll down past ALL the replies to you, and replies to replies.

I recently posted on HN a link to a project I open sourced which I spent 5 years of 10-40 hour weeks working on. I built it for myself, but happened to put effort into open sourcing and documenting it so others can use it. The top comment was: "Saw JS was required to see the website. So I left."

It may be valuable to the person who built the site, but no one else. It's like being invited to a party, and then saying "your door was painted yellow, thats enough for me!"

The issue isn't that a person posts it, but why is it always the top comment?

[mrec]

I think this is less of a problem now that HN supports collapsing subtrees. It'll probably be a while before users internalize it, but if the top comment doesn't interest you, it's one click to hide it and all its replies.

[wybiral]

Agreed (I'm surprised it has so many upvotes).

Maybe it's the polarizing effect. The comment wasn't for or against FB but it somehow resulted in FB vs Google subcomments. I've seen the same happen with languages, IDEs, operating systems. I don't get it...

But I'm guessing the snowball from that is why they end up on top.

That wasn't the intention, but there are three other comments on the OP mentioning the same issue so it caught other people off guard for some reason.

If you wanted to point that out and avoid the snowball, what do you think the best approach is?