Hacker News Guidelines

The only one I subtly disagree with is "comments should be substantive". What it discourages I think is comments like "thanks" or other really 'unsubstantive' comments. It's true that maybe it adds noise, and in many cases are maybe supposed to be inferred without explicitly saying. But I think discouraging this slightly leans behaviour towards snark vs not. (If you see comments like "thanks" you're less likely to be snarky than if you see 'substantive' but maybe too harsh critiques in the comments that appear because "cool project!" isn't allowed.)

Personally I like to make it a point to break this rule from time to time to reduce this pattern.

In the specific instance of a "thanks" message, I'll somewhat regularly send an out of band message to say thanks for helpful replies(or general comments). It doesn't pollute the threads for others, and I'd like to think the added cost of a personal note gives the reader a sense of the value I found in their writing.

I'm yet to have any pushback on sending a thank you note, but who knows maybe it will upset some people in the future ;)

Which - I guess - also deserves a "add some contact details to profile" note.