[vineyardmike]

> So responding to a post but not getting responses is the same as responding to slop with a financial incentive? I'm not sure I fully follow

HN doesn’t have financial (?) incentives (but does Quora?). The point was mostly about the quality of content, the type of content, etc. I don’t mean to criticize anyone, I think it’s human behavior.

The root question of my claim is: When you create a (top-level or other) comment, how do you measure if it “contributes to the conversation”?

Most comments probably have zero engagement, while the top few comments drive the conversation. Part of that is the UI driving people towards the top. My claim is that most commenters, just like most quora users, are answering out of their own need to speak. I think the XKCD link describes the behavior well - and my claim is that it also includes sharing personal anecdotes and opinions and similar, not just “correcting misinformation”.

I have my own share of comments with no upvotes and no replies, which I can only assume means no one found it to contribute. I mean no disrespect towards others in similar positions. But does its presence in the database for casual passersby’s mean anything despite that? Despite the goals and intentions, does it matter? Should it just be routed to dev/null to silently fill my desire to speak? Should an LLM just entertain me with artificial conversation for entertainment?