At the beginning of your post, you talk about “the value” of comments in a way that seems like it’s purely connected to their information content. Why not view them as speech acts?
It’s not unreasonable to view comments as speech acts, but (a) many speech acts (especially on a forum like this one) are indeed intended to convey information, and (b) the value of almost all such speech acts comes almost entirely from their information content. Indeed, the value of the sorts of comments that Zack is describing almost always comes entirely from their information content, and not from anything else.
At the beginning of your post, you talk about “the value” of comments in a way that seems like it’s purely connected to their information content. Why not view them as speech acts?
It’s not unreasonable to view comments as speech acts, but (a) many speech acts (especially on a forum like this one) are indeed intended to convey information, and (b) the value of almost all such speech acts comes almost entirely from their information content. Indeed, the value of the sorts of comments that Zack is describing almost always comes entirely from their information content, and not from anything else.