How can I make better comments?
gojomo: Minimize. Don't say 'great article' or 'great comment'; use an upvote. Avoid cliches of phrase and thought, especially emotionally-charged cliches.Details from hard-won personal experience are always good. Armchair intuitions and snap judgments, rarely.Use the 'delay' setting, set for a few minutes, and reread your comment just as the delay is expiring. Fix typos and problems with clarity at any time, but avoid adding or removing substantive points without acknowledgment -- especially if there are replies.Read others' comments charitably. Think, "In what way could this make sense?", rather than "Aha, gotcha!" (Obsessively finding trivial bugs in code is a virtue; in conversation, it's rude.)Also, read articles charitably and considerate of their original context. A mood piece, a blog post, a popular-media account, etc. is written by an author with certain goals and for an imagined audience. To savage such an article because, once removed from its original context, it doesn't meet other standards or please some other alien audience is cheap, empty, artificial controversialism.