[tluyben2]

Ah! I think you are onto something there. I noticed it as well; Reddit is the worst offender as even serious and well founded comments are butchered and lighthearted/funny ones are upvoted in the 10000s. If you have better stuff to do, you will just think; fuck it then I don't answer. I would love to have good discussions with new peers online, but doing that in open court seems to attract the weirdos so I just go do something else.

So that said; where do people go online who want to have serious (tech) discussions? Must be some secret place with a person like Linus kicking everyone out he doesn't like at first offense.

[kop316]

So far this seems the best we have, and this is the only community I really will comment in. I think keeping up such a community means we have to ensure that the serios and well founded comments are upvoted, and the lazy/annoying/"funny" comments are kept off.

[dEnigma]

Personally I found Hacker News to be the best place for serious and thought-out comments. Research and critical thinking is rewarded (most of the time), while silly jokes (when not embedded in more substantial comments) and inflammatory content are frowned upon. It's actually a joy to read comments here, while I really dread —and often avoid— it on other sites.

Apart from that, technical forums for specific topics, like the ones for certain Linux distributions or other open source projects, have their merits; but they are naturally limited in the breadth of topics discussed. (Some might have very interesting and broad off-topic discussions though)

[mseebach]

I largely agree, but HN has some blind spots in this regard - most discussions about the workplace, open plans, working from home and especially interviewing almost invariably descends into angry rants and borderline conspiracy theory. My gut feeling is that this had been pretty constant, but the comparison of this thread with two years ago suggests otherwise.

I've also had a couple of brushes recently where what I considered reasonably calm and uncontroversial posts on a technical subject got alternating up and down votes for hours. I don't recall that happening before.

[smaddox]

I can't count the number of times recently that I've starting composing a comment on here, only to decide against posting it due to laziness and/or disinterest in the response. In fact, just a minute ago, while writing this comment, I decided not to post this comment, hit the back button and started scrolling on. But then a minute later realized what I was doing and decided to come back and comment.

Maybe that's just a sign of my growing older, but I think some of it might be the degradation of the community's general moral.

[specialist]

I do this all the time. It's a form of rubber ducking.

Articulating myself, to myself, even if I don't share it, is often worthwhile. Why do I agree? Disagree? Is my observation novel? Enough to share?

Once I figure out what I'm thinking, do I care enough to share? Is the recipient worth my time? Do I really want to interrupt someone who's digging themselves into a hole?

Etc.

[pault]

Here. It's the best we've got.