[mechanical_fish]

The comments that get the highest ratings are usually snappy one-liners or the guy who posted first on the thread.

Speaking as someone who, from the available evidence, can't clear his throat in print without a five-paragraph running start [1]: What exactly is wrong with one-liners? They are mercifully short!

Yes, it's possible for a social news site to be completely taken over by short-form snark. But HN has resisted that pretty well so far. I mean, I haven't given up yet. And, frankly, it's far better for half the posts to be one line long than for half of them to be four-page harangues.

I will also note that my tendency to leave multi-paragraph monoliths in the comments hasn't hurt my ratings any.

As for the tendency of people to get upmodded farther if they post sooner, or if they respond to things that they also upvote: Last month everyone was complaining that too many submissions fall off the /newest page without receiving any upvotes or comments. What's wrong with having an incentive that prompts people to analyze the new submissions as soon as they come through the door? That's valuable work!

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[1] To quote Pascal: "I would not have made this so long except that I do not have the leisure to make it shorter."

[sounddust]

There's nothing wrong with snappy one-liners getting modded up. It's just that there are so many thoughtful, intelligent comments that get ignored and buried, or even worse, modded down because their viewpoint is against the common belief of the people participating in the thread.

There are so many arguments that would not get improperly modded down if votes were public and subject to scrutiny. It only happens now because people know that they can anonymously get away with it.