I feel this, but also, I am... anxious about reactions? I rarely / never go back on comments I've written on HN. I know it's actually a really bad thing to do because it means I won't allow my views to be challenged, don't engage in debate, just want to get my side out without actively defending it.
Years ago I had a blog and one time I wrote a post in response to another blog post about education vs experience, arguing in favor of formal education. And that one got a link back from the original article, leading people back to my blog. I got engagement, comments, feedback, etc... and it was very uh. Overwhelming? Like suddenly I had to defend my arguments. It made me very uncomfortable, even though it was probably a good thing, all in all.
I don't know how to break that trend. I think I'd rather have realtime communications / chat, but that's another thing that seems to have died, at least in the space I've been at for a long time now.
The simple solution is that whenever you start to write a comment, ask yourself: do I want to have a discussion about this?
If the answer is "yes", then make your comment, check back and interact with the responses (assuming they seem to be in good faith). If it's "no" then just close the comment box and get on with your life.
But then I realise that it's fairly pointless writing this in the first place...
Years ago I had a blog and one time I wrote a post in response to another blog post about education vs experience, arguing in favor of formal education. And that one got a link back from the original article, leading people back to my blog. I got engagement, comments, feedback, etc... and it was very uh. Overwhelming? Like suddenly I had to defend my arguments. It made me very uncomfortable, even though it was probably a good thing, all in all.
I don't know how to break that trend. I think I'd rather have realtime communications / chat, but that's another thing that seems to have died, at least in the space I've been at for a long time now.