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HN, for me, is all about the comments.

I’m always shopping for new perspectives or opinions that I haven’t seen yet that maybe give me a clue on how to do things better.

People tend to give a lot of perspective in-between the words they’re writing. How people use, feel about or otherwise think about ‘things’ (products or services).

That’s the gold here for me. Learning how people see the obviousness that I also see, but in their own unique ways.

Helps me build better stuff.




I too find the comments to be the greatest part of HN. I used to use Slashdot for the same reason.


You're missing out. Most of the interesting comments are shadowbanned.

Reddit is much better for open discussion. 10x better.


I'd much prefer HN's scarce supply of armchair commentary to reddit's endless supply of quickly triggered "meme" comments.


The strict moderation is a feature for me.


I just wish I could choose to see what was removed, somehow.

Do you feel that'd impede on your experience, that being possible? Genuine question.


In your profile, there is a choice called "showdead". If you set that to yes, you see those comments.


Shadowbanned is not the same as downvoted/dead, unless I've missed something.


It's the same. If you turn on 'showdead' you see all comments by banned users as well as comments killed by software, user flags, or (more rarely) moderators.

There's such a thing as deleting a comment, in which case it's no longer visible even with showdead turned on. But only the author can do that. Software never does it, and we never do it unless the author asks us to.


which subreddits? I haven't found this to be the case, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.




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