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Please do not attempt to justify obnoxious and off-topic comments. The hypothetical positive effect of influencing other submitters who may or may not even be reading the story you post them to does not outweigh the very real negative effect of degrading discussion.

Might I suggest as an alternative that if you wish to whine/encourage others to submit better articles, you can simply "Leave url blank to submit a question for discussion." In that way, you can create a more suitable venue for airing your grievances, rather than shitting up every other thread with either complaints about the that article or in this case, complaints about a whole class of other articles.

That the highest-voted comment on this article is completely off-topic isn't and indicator of efficacy at encouraging better submissions as much as it is an indicator that the quality of the discussion is dreadful. And that, frankly, is a more dire concern for the vitality of a site than whether any given reader (even one with vague claims to seniority) has to ignore a few submissions that others have chosen not to ignore.




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