I've found increasingly I'll submit a comment only to go back 30 seconds later and delete it.

I participate in a number of 'old school' forums, never anything like reddit or discord. On those forums, while I have posted on some a fair amount, I actually find that most of the time I spend 15 minutes writing up a post, then delete it. There are a number of reasons I don't hit the submit button. Sometimes its because I see that a lot of other posters will disagree with it, and I don't think they will argue rationally and in good faith; but the most valuable posts I don't submit are when I get to a point in my argument when I realize that I'm wrong or that my opinion or point of view is badly supported or any numer of other things that force me to re-evaluate position. I've probably held that position for a while thinking I'm right, but actually formulating the argument forces me to confront my biases or mistakes.

I mostly do that when I go "that was a little bit mean of me... do I really need to be mean, what's the point?"

Fortunately, that seems to also have trained me to not write those comments in the first place. I also think much more about what I am trying to actually effect with a comment, not just about what feels good in the particular moment.

One thing that didn't change though is that probably most of my comments are edited at least once, often a few times, right after sending them. And even if it's just swapping out a word, or adding a missing comma. This one here is no exception at all, I just added this paragraph after doing some minor edits.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I've been doing that a ton on HN lately.

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