> Your statement assumes the entire concept of discourse is to say things in the minimal number of bytes or words or whatever.
No, that's not my assumption at all.
I find it very useful if someone summarizes previous stuff, or reformulates hard-to-understand (e.g. badly worded) previous comments.
However, you should do that consciously. There's no sense in writing a comment that essentially just repeats what others already have written in better words than you'd ever do. Doing that is a waste of time not only for you (the writer) but also for all the readers. And it happens a lot, simply because people are too lazy to skim though the previous discussion.
Some people gain insight and understanding by trying to explain the material to others. Maybe they think they are saying something different and need to have the sameness pointed out. Perhaps they just think reiterating the point will help others understand by seeing it again.
The above may be wastes of your time or energy or limited word count, but they are not wasteful to others (in fact, the opposite is true -- someone may actually be benefitting!). This is my point: what is wasteful to you may be beneficial to others.
You can downvote it, or wait until stories have been around for a bit so others will have sorted for you (and only read the top comments of course).
> Perhaps they just think reiterating the point will help others understand by seeing it again.
This is of course possible, and I don't object that as long as they know they are reiterating. However, this is only possible if people at least skim over previous posts, which is usually not the case, and which is why hints to previous discussions are not only helpful but necessary to avoid wasting time.
> This is my point: what is wasteful to you may be beneficial to others.
Repeating something for didactic reasons is sometimes indeed no waste of time for the writer. However, if the writer then publishes this, despite other people already wrote that stuff up in a much better way, that person wastes the time of the readers by filling up the comments with, let's face it and call it by its name, garbage.
No, that's not my assumption at all.
I find it very useful if someone summarizes previous stuff, or reformulates hard-to-understand (e.g. badly worded) previous comments.
However, you should do that consciously. There's no sense in writing a comment that essentially just repeats what others already have written in better words than you'd ever do. Doing that is a waste of time not only for you (the writer) but also for all the readers. And it happens a lot, simply because people are too lazy to skim though the previous discussion.