Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?

[Crystalin]

I find myself reading the comments on HN before the articles most of the time... It usually brings a better/shorter description and decent reaction.

Only when I don't fully understand the arguments then I read the article

[stevenicr]

9 out 10 times never read the article - comments often shine the light that there is a better X that is open source, or that the thing I wanted when reading the title is Mac or IOS only - save me the click and the time.

I do try to read the article / thing if I am going to comment - but that's not many.

Many times the comments let me know that other needed thing is not released yet - or that no pricing info is published - love those saved clicks.

[stackbutterflow]

9 out 10 times never read the article

I also do that. Most non-news articles aren't better than the average two paragraphs HN comment, but they are 10 times as long. Time is precious and at some point who has the time for yet another "[strong opinion about some technology/pattern/that's how we do at our company]". Almost 100% of the time the comments contain better information on the topic tackled by the article and with higher information density.

If it's a news article there's always a few comments quoting important parts of the article which is usually enough to understand what's being reported.

The articles that I tend to prefer and to read are the ones that highlight a feature that I wasn't aware of about a language that I'm interested in.

[xnorswap]

I do this, but it's a dangerous trap to assume that the commenters are more reliable or a better authority than the articles themselves.

The articles have a filter that someone has gone to the "effort" of writing up an article, and it takes a lot of upvotes to get to the front page. The commentary has no such filter.

It's very easy to shoot down ideas on HN in the comments and get rewarded for it, especially if it's to dismiss a product with alternatives. Not just the now notorious dropbox comment, but I'm often seeing comments here suggesting alternatives that if you're in the know you'll realise just don't solve the problems in a pain free way.

[stevenicr]

I agree with your statements here, and certainly what I do mostly is not what I do all the time. Especially if it was like health info I'd dig deeper for example. I think part of my method is also what threads I click or don't click - so the experience is going to vary with that selection biases as well.

when people mention mac only (big thanks to those who do this!) - I tend to just believe and move on.

with some projects I open tabs for the article and all the alternatives people mention bookmark to dig into later.

So my methods are not always this or that - but as a general 'way of HN' for me, these methods are what makes HN a great time saver in general, but not always.

[usr1106]

Depends. If I don't understand from the headline what it is all about I check the top comments. If the topic sounds like genuinely interesting technical information I read the article first. And everything between those 2 extremes depending on the phase of the moon...

[sleightofmind]

This. Exactly.

[yen223]

I used to, but I'm trying not to anymore. I've seen enough instances where the top comment was either irrelevant or outright wrong about the article in question.

[Semiapies]

It's rare that I do more than skim the comments after the article, anymore. If the number of comments is low, I don't even bother, because it's always "Why not use this other language/program/distro?"

[MuffinFlavored]

I never read the articles to be honest. Dead serious.

[CAPSLOCKSSTUCK]

+1, was looking for this. Some of the articles are rewarding, though.

[mitchbob]

I skim the top comments first to try to find out if the article is worth reading.

[AnimalMuppet]

Yeah. Too many articles waste too much of my time. They want to make me go down two or three screens before they bother to tell me the interesting part, but the HN comments tend to center on that part.

[sircastor]

Often. Sometimes I don’t read the article at all because I’m more interested in the conversation happening than I am in whatever the article was about. And it’s common for HN comments to evolve into a conversation about something the article is tangential.

[NickRandom]

Based on the responses/replies here -

Perhaps it is time to retire one of the HN guidelines namely - Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." since it seems a lot of people haven't actually RTFA when posting comments.

[yesenadam]

The point of the guideline is, I think, that saying "Did you even read the article?" adds nothing of value, just spite and bad feelings to HN, and on top of that, wastes our time. The guideline isn't about reading the article or not, but being a jerk or not.

[NickRandom]

Perhaps. But I don't think I've ever seen just a "Did you read the article?" on it's own eg as a single - "Did you read the article?" rather than a "Did you read the article? Because it clearly said/stated/made the point that .....".

Have you ever seen a "Did you RTFA?" just as a single comment with nothing else?

Honest question because I've never seen that but may have missed some.

[yesenadam]

Yes, I've seen something like that many times, on its own.

Besides that, I don't understand your first paragraph, what you're trying to say, why you mention the phrase on its own. I had a similar feeling reading your initial comment - no idea why you would say that. I'm missing something, not sure what. "Since a lot of people don't read the article, we don't need the rule against saying 'Did you read the article?'" makes no sense to me as a piece of reasoning. The conclusion of the argument seems to have nothing to do with the premise(s). Whether 0%, 50% or 100% of people read the article would make no difference to the value of that rule, seems to me.

[Semiapies]

Then add "Clearly didn't read the article" as a reason to flag posts.

[tus666]

Yes, and I often don't read the article at all, especially if it's blogspam that can be largely inferred from the title.

e.g. "Why I like small projects"

[notreallyserio]

I usually don't even read the comments on those posts. I think I need to start making better use of the hide button.

[krapp]

I try not to. Sometimes I'm lazy but I usually try to put in the effort to read the article first, if I think it might be interesting, because I tend to find the articles to be more insightful than the commentariat, and because I tend to complain about people not reading the articles a lot. I think it's important to try to expand one's intellectual horizons and take the risk of engagement in a community predicated on satisfying intellectual curiosity, because otherwise comments tend to feed on each others' ignorance rather than spread insight. Especially for subjects not likely to be in HN's wheelhouse (anything non-technical, or technical but not related to programming) or subjects with any political or social dimension, where the tendency towards the "aggressively ignorant hot take" might prevail. I see little value in reading the comments first in those cases.

Conversely, if I haven't read the article, I try not to comment as if I have.

[karaterobot]

Not usually, but sometimes I will read part of an article and then look to the comments to see if there is an explanation or discussion of something I didn't understand, before continuing. I would not trust HN comment threads to replace the content of articles: I'm fairly certain there are a lot of people who don't read the articles before commenting on them.

[antman]

I read mostly only the comments except the: "why not that other irrelevant thing", "I remember this irrelevant anecdote", "Rust ftw"

For science postings I read the artcle, half of wikipedia and then humbly read the comments.

[jwarden]

I rarely read articles. Reading an article is a time commitment of, usually, at least several minutes. But I can skim through the comments without commitment.

And often the first few comments are enough for me to decide if the article is worth reading.

[bediger4000]

I usually don't. I don't want the comments to color my thinking on the article.

The exceptions arise when I have already read up on the topic, so I might read the comments to see how the article effects others, then go read it to see what slant it has.

[lucozade]

If the title looks like clickbait or overly US political, I'll skim the top few comments first to see if there's any interesting conversations. If not, there's a decent chance that the article is also pants so I won't bother with either the article or the comments.

[rendall]

Often. I use the interestingness of the discussion as a proxy to see if the article is worth a look.

[tayo42]

I think of the title as more of a conversation topic starter. most threads end up totally derailed.

[V__]

It depends. When commenting I read the article first but often times I'm more interested in the discussion, other people's opinions, and further interesting related content linked in the comments.

[marginalia_nu]

Depends on the topic, even if HN has a relatively high signal to noise ratio, a lot of it is still noise. I mostly read blogs off gemini aggregators like Antenna.

So I'm mostly using HN as an ersatz message board.

[sloaken]

Never thought of doing that. Usually for articles I do not read the comments at all. And I only look at the article if I have a STRONG interest. But NOW I have a new tactic, thanks.

[paxys]

I almost always read the comments before reading the article (and sometimes don't read the article at all).

I do, however, read the article before I write a comment of my own.

[t0bia_s]

It depends on type of article. If that is some story I prefer to read it. If that is some kind of news, I prefer comments. If that is about idea, I prefer both.

[justsomehnguy]

Nothing new:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=RTFA

[Havoc]

About 50/50 depending on the title (and platform linked).

[jrootabega]

I certainly VISIT the comments first. That way I can just use the back button to get back to the comments after I read it. Which I don't always do.

[weird-eye-issue]

You read the articles?

[xaxaxb]

I do mostly. Yes.

[notreallyserio]

I usually read the comments first and then read the article second, but I almost always read the article before writing my own comment.

[zulban]

I skim the top comments first to see if they all slam the article, if so, maybe I abandon the whole story. Same on Reddit.

[m4rc3lv]

I always read the article and then I most of the times also read other articles on the site linked before I return to HN

[Nihilartikel]

I also preferentially bookmark the comment thread rather than the article if I want to keep it for reference.

[jdrc]

I write comments before the article

[a9h74j]

Sometimes I write comments before reading the title. What are we talking about?

[bheadmaster]

I just come here to read discussions. I learn so much just from random people mentioning stuff like "hey I use X and it's really great for Y, much better than Z". I don't care much for the articles themselves, especially if they come from a website whose sole purpose is "writing articles", has paywalls or advertisements, or is terribly designed or implemented with a crapload of JavaScript code whose execution is needed just to show a simple paragraph of text.

Occasionally, I find an interesting article and actually read it, but most of the time such articles come from personal blogs of developers who just wanna write about an interesting thing they learned. Coincidentally, such writers tend to share my love for simplicity and terseness - they contain no ads, no distractions and in most cases no necessary JavaScript code - they just write about the thing they're writing about and don't distract you. The j3s.sh website is a nice example that I could find amongst my bookmarks.

[derekja]

usually. Depends on how much I care about the article. If it is squarely relevant to my interests, I click to it directly. Otherwise, the HN commentary is often more enlightening (or at least amusing).

[forgotmypw17]

Almost definitely not reading the article if it’s not on the page. Cookie banners, newsletter modals, paywalls gtfo.

[Hackbraten]

Also geoblocking.

[naoqj]

I don’t see newsletter modals as often as I see cookie banners or paywalls by far.