> Taking the time to write something, and read over it is a better skill than asking an LLM to do it for you.

Yes, this is a great skill to have: no argument from me. This wasn't my point, and I hope you can see than upon reflection.

> All those points you mention in your first paragraph are excuses, trying to make it seem like there was some sort of effort to get an LLM to write a post.

Consider that a reader of the word 'excuses' would often perceive an escalation of sorts. A dismissal.

> Quality comes from your ability to think and reason through a topic.

That's part of it. Since the quote above is a bit ambiguous to me, I will rephrase it as "What are the factors that influence the quality of a comment posted on Hacker News?" and then answer the question. I would then split apart that question into sub-questions of the form "To what extent does a comment ..."

- address the context? Pay attention to the conversational history?

- follow the guidelines of the forum?

- communicate something useful to at least some of the readers?

- use good reasoning?

One thing that all of the four bullet points require is intelligence. Until roughly ~2 years ago, most people would have said the above demand human intelligence; AI can't come close. But the gap is narrowing. Anyhow, I would very much like to see more intelligence (of all kinds, via various methods, including LLM-assisted brainstorming) in the service of better comments here. But intelligence isn't enough; there are also shared values. Shared values of empathy and charity.

In case you are wondering about my "agenda"... it is something along the lines of "I want everyone to think a lot harder about these issues, because we ain't seen NOTHING yet". I also strive try to promote and model the kind of community I want to see here.

You missed something much more important than all 4 of those points:

- what does the human behind the keyboard think

If you want us to understand you, post your prompts.

Some might suggest that the output of an LLM might have value on it's own, disconnected from whatever the human operating it was thinking, but I disagree.

Every single person you speak with on HN has the same LLM access that you do. Every single one has access to whatever insights an LLM might have. You contribute nothing by copying it's output, anyone here can do that. The only differentiator between your LLM output and mine, is what was used to prompt it.

Don't hide your contributions, your one true value - post your prompts.