Except that the quality of HN comments varies widely: not all commenters on HN are experts in the subjects they're writing about (and the people voting up a comment aren't necessarily experts either). A general reader following a link here from Wikipedia is not likely to be able to tell the difference between an expert and a non-expert. Thus, HN would make a much worse secondary source than something like an industry publication that has an editor and fact checkers (rare as these seem to be in our field today).
And in that case, a reader who does know the difference would hopefully edit the page to remove any secondary sources that aren't of good quality, such as links to HN comments that are flat-out incorrect.
And who identifies them as incorrect? Not the editor.. Wikipedia looks for expert opinion published in reliable outlets to avoid the problem of people enforcing their own point of view.
At least in theory.
HN comments are usually interesting, but lack any form of editorial control :)
