[OJFord]

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.)

[joh6nn]

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.

[OJFord]

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).

[OJFord]

Too late to edit but I just wanted to add never a top-level comment, but in thread probably quite a lot actually.

And as an example of how it could be much less of a tangent, more related but still not require reading TFA to comment, I saw something recently where a top-level comment was along the lines 'I would use strace for this personally', and then the thread was all about strace. Commenting in that thread, other than to compare it to whatever OP was doing, doesn't really require reading the article, because it's about something else now, and that's been made clear from the top-level comment.

I suppose it's kind of like joining a discussion at a party - you don't need to be excluded just because you missed the thing that started the conversation. Difference here is if you want/need to or are interested, you can still just go and read it without someone having to awkwardly/hurriedly fill you in.