You're just being lazy by demanding someone to do your research or write an article for you. Think of it from their perspective: why would they? Any reason someone might post on HN with a comment containing original or well-thought content can be better accomplished by putting that effort elsewhere, in a blog post or website article, and then posting that article as a submission to HN.
Only a small fraction of HN users even visit the comments page, not to mention the additional exposure one might achieve by getting their message out to folks who don't go to HN.
So yes, there are things to be learned from HN comments. Just not the way you're suggesting.
In other words, stop asking folks for citations on HN (or any other comments section, for that matter). You're wasting everyone's time.
You're positing that people with expert knowledge have an inherent interest in exposing that knowledge to as large an audience as possible, and that this interest is so significant that they would always preferentially invest the extra effort and resources required to write a blog post or website article that properly contextualized and presented the information.
You're positing that the prospect of writing an article or blog post would preclude the possibility of responding to the comment on HN.
You're positing that the nature of this interest implies that these experts would wish to submit their own writings to HN.
To me, it seems that these terms must imply that this interest is not so much in the distribution of information, but in publicity and the tacit validation of expertise brought by the ownership of the information as an original source.
In my experience, this does not reflect the general behaviour of domain experts, who routinely correspond on mailing lists, usenet, and comment forums, including HN. There are in fact extensive comments made by at least one electrical engineer in response to this HN submission.
There is a subset of experts who already blog, for whatever reason, and stand to gain in some way by presenting themselves as an authortative source of knowledge and thought to the HN audience. However, many such persons (patio11 comes to mind) routinely write extensive responses to comments on HN.
Personally, the specific reason I began to routinely read the comments on HN was precisely because I could read fascinating domain-expert knowledge, presented in dense paragraphs, regarding topics that interested me. I usually read the comments about a submission before reading it.
Personally, I do wish to know whether someone's thoughts on a topic reflect domain expertise, or hobby interest; I do wish to know whether an assertion is established fact within a domain, controversial, sourced from an article or a blog post, et cetera, especially if that assertion seems dubious to me; the alternative is to simply continue believing what I believe, and to disregard such statements. In my experience, however, it is sometimes I who is wrong, and the dubious assertion which is correct.
In closing, I'd like to mention that melling, as the new OP of this now detached comment thread, was censured for describing someone's assertions as 'chest beating', which I think was appropriate. However, in the course of your comment here, you have accidentally or deliberately asserted that he was both "lazy" and "wasting everyone's time." I don't think that this sort of argumentation is useful, and I doubt that it is acceptable in your team debates. dang[a moderator]'s comment in reply to melling about "jabs" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899) is relevant, well-written, and interesting, and I think that you could benefit from reading it.
Your argument hinges on me being extreme in my position, when in actuality I am not. I have not said anything nearly as absolute as you've implied. For example, I don't believe me using the words "lazy" or "wasting everyone's time" were an example of what dang refers to as "jabs" -- I was describing an activity. My words were not used as personal insults, but as descriptions of behavior. It is lazy to ask for sources on HN comments, and it is a waste of everyone's time, for the reasons I specified. These aren't insults, because they're specific, and directed at an activity, rather than a person, and I provide reasons for why those activities are as described.
I'm sure some SMEs do make the mistake of posting on HN in an elaborate and detailed fashion, as another example. I've never said it's impossible, that'd be an absurd thing to say. I just said it's not in a) their best interest, and b) many won't for the reasons I outlined.
Coming to HN for the reasons you do is an absolute and unambiguous mistake. What you get here is bad quality, for what you're looking for. You can get much better elsewhere, in the form of blog posts, articles, wiki pages, published papers, etc.
I'll repeat my thesis -- HN holds value as a "back room" where experts can speak without the same rigors with which they usually have to speak. There is value in informal discussion, and that's what happens on HN. Citing sources is a waste of time on HN, because you shouldn't take anything you read here at face value.
Besides, next time you're in a conversation, are you really going to say, "a post I read on HN said..." as a way of citing the source of your knowledge?
