[BillBohan]

I skip past articles and their comments if I know that I will not understand them, e.g. details of a language which I do not know.

Sometimes I will look at articles which are about things I have never heard of just to find out what that is. Sometimes, the article does not sufficiently explain what it is, like when they only tell about the improvements over the previous release. In these cases I try to find what it is from comments.

If an article is tl;dr sometimes I look to the comments to see whether I can get the gist in brief.

For articles within my realm of interest I will usually read the entire article, then the comments.

I usually avoid making comments on articles I have not read unless the comments provide sufficient explanation for me to add my input.

I truly appreciate the intelligence and courtesy of the comments on HN and try to bring the same to it.

[AnimalMuppet]

Seconded. Too often the headline doesn't tell me what the topic is, let alone whether it's worth reading. The comments will, though, in a hurry.