| I believe that in general the comments pointing to alternatives and the shameless plugs are useful in these HN threads, even when their connection with the discussed subject is tenuous. Such comments have become more useful recently, as a form of curated search, when standard Internet searching has started to provide an avalanche of garbage links, to Web pages that only summarize or repeat the primary sources, frequently with errors and failing to point to the original sources. Even if inspecting the suggested alternatives may show them as worthless, finding this may still save time over using a search engine and having to filter an order of magnitude more misleading links. Those not interested in such comments can easily skip over them and not visit any suggested links. When I visit Wikipedia pages, the most frequent reason is for their lists of useful links. Similarly, when reading a HN comment thread, I appreciate links to more or less related content. Today I value such sources far more than a few decades ago, when Google could easily and effortlessly find any desired information, while today you must struggle with any search engine, as they will provide you almost any kind of information, except that requested by you. |