Asking in seriousness: did you comment without reading the link? If so, why? I legit don't understand why people comment on things without having read them, and I would like to
I'm not who you asked, but sometimes the comments are more interesting (or perhaps intriguing, enticing, is a better way to put it) than the submission itself. Sometimes of those times my interest in the submission grows with reading some of the discussion, and then I'll read it.
(Not to say I always do this, but I do definitely click first into comments more often than I go straight for the article - it allows a much lower bar for what seems initially interesting, and I've read a lot more fascinating stuff (submissions and discussions) than I would have otherwise that way.)
Interesting! But this sounds like an explanation why you read the comments without reading the article, not why you comment without reading, and those aren't inherently the same thing.
So to clarify: do you comment on the content of the post without reading it? I'm specifically interested in why people comment on links and articles they didn't read. And for maximum clarity here, I mean commenting on the content of the article, not just contributing to the various related discussions it spawns.
And to reiterate, I'm asking in earnest. It's not something I would do, so I'd like someone who does to weigh in.
Uh, maybe. Less likely to than just reading comments for sure.
But for example this thread is on such a tangent (and it could be a hell of a lot less) that TFA is completely irrelevant to what I would comment or how it would be received, so yes I might; almost certainly have on several occasions (over years and wouldn't-like-to-think-many comments).
Thanks for weighing in! But this is just speculation, right? Are you speaking from experience? I'm specifically looking for someone who does it to explain it.
I mean, I can make my own guesses about various forms of attention seeking and hopes to somehow cash in on high karma all day long but, to me it feels like HN is among the worst possible venues for that. I'm not aware of easy ways to convert HN karma into cash flow like you maybe could with followers on other platforms. So I don't immediately see a benefit in just farming karma for its own sake.
Is there some benefit to karma farming I'm not aware of? Like, some points-to-dollars conversion stream that I'm not in the loop on?