[forrestthewoods]

Comments on the internet are the worst. The majority of comments on technical posts are internet dingleberries who are trying to prove they are smarter than the OP. The more advanced the post the more people come out of the woodwork.

For these reasons my goal for blog posts is high views, low comments. It means you talked about an interesting topic and covered it so thoroughly there was nothing left to be said on the matter.

[arjie]

Internet comments, and HN is no exception, are often about proving how smart the writer of the comment is. But I feel like it's the opposite of what you describe: Discussions on complex technical subjects are sparse because only the well informed can participate.

Posts like this one spawn larger threads because everyone has an opinion that sounds plausible. It's sort of the same phenomenon that leads to a problem requiring great expertise to understand and solve having lower votes on Stack Overflow compared to something telling you to add a semicolon.

Still, optimizing for fewest comments while successfully describing the subject sounds like a great strategy.

[swayvil]

The technical forums are gardens compared to the religious forums.