Cliches like this are OK. What really annoys me is that the top rated comment is invariably a straight-forward contradiction of the original article's thesis. Like this comment here.
Sometimes refutation comments are good and valuable though.
In general the decisive factor in the value of a comment is what I will call the "lebowski rule". If a comment contains a statement of someone's opinion and nothing more it is rarely worthwhile.
By way of illustration, this comment would fit that criterion up to this point.
However, I will explain my reasoning which will hopefully rescue it. In the internet age most people are aware of the variety of opinions on a topic, especially the most obvious pro/anti points on a given topic. What can often happen on sites like reddit or HN is that the first comment that espouses a well-known opinion then becomes effectively an impromptu poll. This breaks the link + comments model though because the opinion of the link is inherent in the link itself so a post voicing unadorned agreement would be easily recognized as valueless and thus generally not created or voted up. Whereas the contrarian opinion has no representation and thus becomes the proxy poll for disagreement. The problem is that people voting for/against place their votes differently, either for the link or for the most popular "middlebrow dismissal" comment. But because these are two separate beasts they can't compete against each other directly. Which is why you get the behavior of highly upvoted rejection comments, since that is effectively a reflection of the controversy around the subject. Even though that rarely improves the level of discussion.
In contrast, a more thoroughly thought out refutation which follows through lines of reasoning and evidence will be more likely to contribute to both the disemination of new knowledge to readers as well as higher quality discussions.
Additionally, the mere attempt to try to improve the quality of a comment through fleshing it out will lead to a higher rate of abandonment of less worthwhile posts.
P.S. Here is one area where I think the HN software doesn't help, because it encourages shorter, more quickly written posts which tends to favor the exploration of shallower depths of thought.
I think the worst is is when the top rated comment is a correction or contradiction of a peripheral assertion in the original article that fails to address the broader implications of the original article.
Though I acknowledge this is a really tough pattern to battle since it's much easier to be certain a quick factual correction provides concrete value than it is to assess a reply with a complicated or nuanced argument. And there is nothing wrong with comments that make a factual correction, it just leads to poor results at the top of the discussion page.
Cliches get to be cliches because they're a good idea that everyone wants to reuse. And recycle. Until they're familiar and then over-familiar.
The top-rating issue is simply symptomatic of the lack of insight of many of the folks clicking the little arrows over their first morning cup of coffee. News delivers a brief stimulus; commentary even briefer: the spasmodic twitch of the mousing fingertip merely signals the assent (or dissent) of the mayfly mind.
> The top-rating issue is simply symptomatic of the lack of insight of many of the folks clicking the little arrows over their first morning cup of coffee.
Totally agree and it's hard to blame them. The real problem might be that people who are over-familiar with the cliche don't bother to down vote.
Reminder to all: take the time to down vote over used cliches that bother you.
Unfortunately, not everyone can down vote, and the fastest route to getting enough points to do so is to make the comments we are complaining about to gather the upvotes.
There is nothing wrong with a top comment being a contradiction. I believe that in this way, it might bring even more useful comments and thoughts since it takes a different angle.
The real problem is that those contradicting comments usually are plain simple negative (not to be confused with criticism, which is alright, I am referring to the grumpy negative ones), demotivating.
There's nothing wrong with useful critique or argument. But as others have said it's very easy to dash off a very quick rebuttal of a minor point in an article, ignoring the main thrust of whatever the article is about.
When I've read six pages of interesting and useful article it's depressing to see the top voted comment on HN is about a footnote on page 4 with little relevance to anything interesting.
I personally call it Pwnage Culture. Karma-based sites love it when a user debunks an article or another user's comment.
You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False." And then you put some random citations to Pubmed or Wikipedia at the bottom of your comment.
Law of Reddit XCVII:
You can make a redditor believe anything, no matter how outlandish, so long as you preface it with "Contrary to what you hear in the MSM...."
But I guess that's a tad more specific than generic second opinion bias, which is what we see here
