61–70 of 341 posts
I used to be upset about this. But now I just use a chrome extension to ban people who have clearly not read the article. It just kills any comment thread they start. My HN is much more useful now. My Twitter is fine because I only follow people who don't do this.
Which extension?
Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a reasonable suggestion, but I would predict comment participation to plunge. Maybe that’s just fine?
It doesn't need to be one or the other. The quiz could be optional, and answering correctly would simply give your comments a rating boost - or inversely, you could put a badge of shame on any comments from people who hadn't passed the quiz. Then you just let the natural human dynamics play out.
This sentence sent a shiver down my spine for some reason.
Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…
This is natural if you follow the amount of effort required. Effort to comment ~ close to zero. Effort to go through an article worth several pages (or worse, a paper!) without dropping off is much, much higher.
From the title this seems to be a violation of HN guidelines. "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article."
Writing an article about bad habits in cyberspace where the title of your piece vaguely calls to mind some guideline in some forum and appears to contradict it is not somehow a violation of that guideline.
As someone with eyesight issues and a demographic outlier for HN who, thus, sees life different from most people here, it's sort of common for people to think I didn't read something when I did, I just missed a detail or I did, I just have a different education and life experience and see something different in it.
And that's one of the reasons you shouldn't say that to someone directly. You are assuming something ugly, basically.
But talking about how reading the article before expressing your opinion is a best practice is unrelated to that detail of etiquette.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a reasonable suggestion, but I would predict comment participation to plunge. Maybe that’s just fine?
It doesn't need to be one or the other. The quiz could be optional, and answering correctly would simply give your comments a rating boost - or inversely, you could put a badge of shame on any comments from people who hadn't passed the quiz. Then you just let the natural human dynamics play out.
From the title this seems to be a violation of HN guidelines. "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article."
I wish the addendum to that rule was “because we will just delete their post anyway.” The lowest value contributions on HN are inevitably those that use a headline to air personal grievances vaguely related to the subject of the post (“Apple releases new cure for diabetes”, top comment: “Let me tell you why I hate the touchbar.”) the second lowest are those that clearly read the headline and ran with it, without read…
Drives me mad. Any Hacker News discussion has an extremely strong push towards the same couple dozen topics that anyone can relate to, and commenters who drag the conversation in that direction for no good reason are doing the thread a disservice.
I used to be upset about this. But now I just use a chrome extension to ban people who have clearly not read the article. It just kills any comment thread they start. My HN is much more useful now. My Twitter is fine because I only follow people who don't do this.
This does not seem possible technically unless you own facebook's ad network.
The key to cleaning up my Twitter feed was to unfollow people who were too good at Twitter. That is: People who are working to maximize engagement, follower count, retweets, and likes. In my feed, the highest signal to noise ratio comes from people who aren't commenting on any and every trending topic. Instead, they're busy doing real work, away from Twitter, only occasionally checking in to share something. Likewise…
So you're saying we need a platform with both characters/post and post/day limits?! I mean... that's beautiful, because I created a second twitter account just so I can follow a select few people for the pretty much the same reason you gave without having to worry they're getting lost to the noise.
It's great because I can just see what people I care about post, and you can arrange it so that the people who post infrequently but that you really care about will be in your face when they do post. I find it soothing, and I can't wait for a proper mobile release.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying we need a platform with both characters/post and post/day limits?! I mean... that's beautiful, because I created a second twitter account just so I can follow a select few people for the pretty much the same reason you gave without having to worry they're getting lost to the noise.
If you build those limits into the system then you lose some of your ability to filter for people who would naturally post below those limits.