[sctb]

The first comments are often thoughtless noise because commenters can skip reading or thinking about the article, or typing something more than a one-liner. The thing to do is wait for the thoughtful ones (more of those will appear, but it takes a bit of time) and engage with them.

[kwamenum86]

That's fair and I shouldn't have let that color my opinion of the entire community. But for hot button issues knee jerk reactions do tend to set the tone for conversations, if not dominate them.

[sctb]

Yes, that's really true. I wonder if we might be able to do something about that in software.

[pathseeker]

You already do. If you refresh the page now, the much more nuanced positions and things have substance have risen to the top and crap has been flagged/downmodded away.