I don't think any professional is making treatment decisions based on random internet forum posts.
The purpose of HN is to have curious conversation about interesting things, and for that the high-order bit is that commenters be thoughtful and not aggressive.
Since you've read the site guidelines, you know that HN is for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity. The curiosity in this case is of another, more intense nature. And you also know that purely sensational stories are deprecated.
It's true that the moderation comments that I post are off-topic, but they're the only way we know of to really disseminate knowledge of how the guidelines work in practice, and there's a clear demand for that information by users. So the judgment call is that their benefit is greater than their cost, even though the cost is nontrivial.
I don't think you'll find a better community than HN. These topics might not seem to be on the front page much but if you post a question about a specific issue I'm sure you'll find plenty of experts offering their advice.
Fair point. I meant that if the HN front page were your only source of information, you'd have to be pretty lucky to have stumbled across any of these threads.
I don't have any objections to the way HN works, just surprised so many users see this topic as flag-worthy relative to those seeing it as an interesting discussion.
EDIT: Nevermind. I see this is back on the front page.
I come here because it is one of the very few places where you can have interesting discussions and read interesting comments from people with a similar intent and interest.
I understand that the commentary on HN can sometimes be frustrating, but many topics are nuanced and worthy of discussion. If you are looking for a forum which converges on one version of the truth and does nothing but repeat that version of the truth to itself, well, maybe try another discussion forum. If you are not interested in participating in those discussions, it's fine to just keep scrolling or collapse the thread entirely.
HN is best when at least some of the commenters have domain expertise or experience that is relevant to the main topic of that thread.
A topic might seem interesting, but if everyone here is just coming at it with whatever random facts and biases they’ve picked up in normal life, then the discussion has a low chance of being valuable. It’s just going to meander until it scrolls off to deep pages and everyone gets tired of fighting.
I don’t think HN needs a discussion on every topic that hits the zeitgeist. There are plenty of other places on the Internet to power discovery. My personal favorite is Twitter, but Reddit is good too. (Both require curation, though.)
It sounds like you know something about this topic. I don't, and I'm sure that many other HN users don't either. Your comment would be better, I think, if you assumed that people here are curious to learn and shared your knowledge in a way that was easier to absorb. If bad ideas are circulating, offer better ideas and explain why they are better. That strategy may not work everywhere, but at least some of the time it does work here.
The discussion is a big part of HN for me. Like early reddit, you often get experts in their field, or constructive, thoughtful criticism of an article.
Jokes and other low-effort replies are thoroughly discouraged.
The purpose of HN is to have curious conversation about interesting things, and for that the high-order bit is that commenters be thoughtful and not aggressive.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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