[CodeMage]

I guess that what puts me off is the "TL;DR" expression itself. It passes a judgment both on the content ("it was too long, so I didn't read it") and the readers of the comment ("since you don't read stuff that's long, here's what it's about").

I'm certainly not criticizing hammock's summary. As these things go, his is pretty accurate. But the best you can say about a summary is that it doesn't really add anything to a discussion -- that's what makes a good summary.

[wccrawford]

Think of it more like metadata. I've had good summaries get me to read the entire article, when I would have blown it off by the title alone. (Time isn't infinite... You have to choose somehow.)

So in that respect summaries can indirectly add to the discussion.

[jerf]

I'm sitting on an HN self post on this topic, which largely follows your logic and expands it a bit more (though not too much for a self post). Haven't been able to figure out if I should post it or not.

[CodeMage]

I at least would love to see it.