HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you write comments, and then not submit them?

61 points by wooby ↗ HN
I find myself writing comments, looking them over, and then not submitting them pretty often. A friend of mine is the same way.

I'm just curious how common this is.

54 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] thread
tjr
Sure, I've only posted perhaps 1/2 to 2/3 of the comments I've written. They weren't necessarily inflammatory comments, but just didn't add anything useful to the conversation.
aston
http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
[dead] behe101
IMO this really isn't appropriate for a poll, here the reason has more weight than a simple yes/no answer.
Sephr
Good idea, I created a poll with a similar question (it asks for how often instead of a boolean response).
aneesh
Plenty of times. Sometimes I even submit them and delete them a minute later.

I felt like I had something interesting to say, but when I actually articulated it, it didn't add much to the conversation. If you noticed PG's essay that he wrote with Etherpad, he had entire paragraphs in his draft that didn't make it to the final version.

Xichekolas
Even more than that, sometimes while writing a comment I'll realize my position is flawed. I generally try and make sure my argument is sound before I submit, because I know you can't get by on hand-waving here. Often in my search for data to support my case, or even when I just try to articulate it properly, I find that I'm actually arguing the wrong side of something.

Being forced to re-examine my own positions is one of the things I enjoy most about a discussion, whether it's caused by something someone else says or something I almost said, then thought better of.

(Also, most things I've submitted within the last 10 minutes are being furiously edited. Not sure why, but I don't notice a lot of things until I read my own post in the context of the others.)

jay_kyburz
I do the same. Also, I only join forums using my real name these days.
tlrobinson
Yeah I found that helped me be a bit more mature on online forums. In high school I would use pseudo-anonymous screen names, which perhaps allowed me to say things I wouldn't really want attributed to my real name, even though it was still trivial to link it to my real name. Now I just use my initials + last name, which is a good reminder that you're definitely not really anonymous on the internet.
Evgeny
I saw the question and wanted to answer something along these lines. So I opened the link and saw that I have nothing to add other than "+1". Now I'm thinking if there's a point in submitting this comment. Oh well, once in a while I'll submit what I decided not to submit. Do I make sense at all?
edw519
Rarely.

I gave up long ago trying to judge my own comments and submissions.

I often submit what I think is a great article and it dies on the "new" page without any votes. Or I'll make what I think is a good comment and no one cares.

OTOH, sometimes I'll just throw something off the top of my head and it gets something started.

I just try to not be a jerk (most of the time) and submit what I'm thinking. Let the community be the judge.

ErrantX
> I often submit what I think is a great article and it dies on the "new" page without any votes.

I made a few self submissions of things I thought were great, interesting concepts and which garnered no interest at all.

Those interest me more than a strong debate TBH, there was plenty of click through but no real interest in my thoughts. It's a non-starter. These things are good to know!

HN taught me a lot about how hard you have to work to have a respected opinion. Which is good :)

lallysingh
All the time. This is the only place I do that. Mostly the quick joke I'd submit to /. or reddit.
ChrisXYZ
Yeah, I do it fairly often.

If I find myself putting too much work into a comment I think to myself, "How many people are actually going to read this? What effect is it really going to have on anything? Do I really want to do all this work for something that will disappear into the internet ether?"

I really only leave comments if I can fire them off quickly and I'm in the right mood.

jrockway
There's no need to let long comments disappear into the ether. I usually mention mine on Twitter. You can also submit them as articles.
grandalf
I've done this before, but the usual pattern for me is to delete the first two paragraphs after realizing that the third paragraph is really all I wanted to say :)
devin
Definitely. I don't usually submit comments unless something gets my goat or I feel like there is an important angle that isn't being articulated. Basically, the question I ask myself is "Am I adding value to this conversation?" If the answer is no for any reason I either modify the comment or skip it altogether.

Sorry to use the parlance of our times, but people who submit everything they type are IMO "that guy".

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siculars
i would say it is more common than not. i find that writing out the thought often helps crystallize your thoughts and at that point what you thought may not be worth submitting after you actually see it in front of you.
jwilliams
Certainly do. What I do lately is I tend to stay logged out when I read YC.

I find the activation energy to log in is high enough to be useful -- so I generally only log in and comment / post when I really have something to say.

erlanger 

  # withholding long-winded reply
paulgb
I do this on other sites more often, but occasionally on HN as well. It's usually when I'm not satisfied with the way I worded the comment.

More often what I do is write a several paragraph reply, and then cut it down to a few sentences.

jsz0
Sure, all the time.

Sometimes it just doesn't add anything interesting. Sometimes it's just too big of an idea to explain in a couple paragraphs. Sometimes I'm just not not sure my opinion is well informed enough to commit to the Internet forever.

Silentio
On Hacker News, definite yes. Other sites, not so often. But I am not moved to comment on other sites as often as I am here.
ryanwaggoner
Ironically, I'm virtually certain that I wrote this exact question and then decided not to submit it :)
sunir
I'm the reverse. I stopped commenting online a long time ago, but Hacker News is the only place that I bother. Conversations here tend to go places.
barrybe
Yeah, fairly often.

I think the most common reason for me to cancel a comment is just knowing how internet people are. People on the internet, especially software people, are really really critical. I think there's a certain group of people that browse forums with the sole intention of pointing out how other people are wrong.

So sometimes if I have a slightly controversial opinion, I will just not bother commenting, because I don't feel like dealing with the nitpickers.

donaq
Yes, but then I do this for every site I participate in, because Goddess forbid I am wrong on the internet.
mattchew
Sure. Sometimes I have something I'd like to say, but I can't say it well enough to be satisfied with submitting. Other times I decide my comment, or the whole conversation, just really isn't that interesting.
msb
Did it three times on this thread alone. Here's hoping for 15!
jganetsk
I usually DO submit my comments, and regret it. This a tough crowd, and the system works very effectively.