I write comments before the article
Sometimes I write comments before reading the title. What are we talking about?
Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#22I always read the article and then I most of the times also read other articles on the site linked before I return to HN
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#23Almost definitely not reading the article if it’s not on the page. Cookie banners, newsletter modals, paywalls gtfo.
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#24You read the articles?
I do mostly. Yes.
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#25I 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.
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#26Almost definitely not reading the article if it’s not on the page. Cookie banners, newsletter modals, paywalls gtfo.
Also geoblocking.
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#27I skim the top comments first to try to find out if the article is worth reading.
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Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#289 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 publis…
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.
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#29[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: I read comments before the article, do you?
#30I 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.