[hga]

A simpler principle for initially dealing with this: ask yourself "What am I trying to accomplish with this comment?"

On a forum like Hacker News, it should generally be one of the "make things better" reasons that are suggested by others.

But alternatively, you can on various forums, and I suppose the occasional Hacker News discussion, comment to make yourself feel better (however that works).

Ah, another suggestion: look back on your old comments (easy with Hacker News) and ask yourself if you're now glad you made (enough of) them. Do they make you cringe, or feel proud?

[medienjunkie]

I don't comment to make myself feel better (I mean not to show off how smart I am or whatever). The topics that make me comment are the ones where I feel people are completely unreasonable. As xkcd says - someone is wrong on the internet.

Mostly political, which somehow has sneaked into HN by now against the original rules.