Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#61

Post by alecco » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 10:31 AM UTC

michaelneale wrote: post #38

Yes - but generally only on HN due to the quality of the comments. If I was to do it at reddit or digg, it is purely for humour value.

Funny, I became an avid /r/programming reader after reading all this groupthink bashing. There are very valuable discussions on Reddit if you ignore the obvious trolls and jokes.

I found Reddit's programming significantly more technical than HN, with most people talking from experience instead of guessing. Compare recent discussions on the same technical story on HN vs. Reddit.

Also HN gets to me because it harder to find reasonable arguments with completely opposed views without massive up/down-votes [by the masses backing their side]. Reddit [discussions] [often have] opposed but very insightful comments together and both [have] hundreds of up-votes.

The traditional HN bashing of other sites lowers the discussion and actually it's very typical of, er, Digg/Reddit (pun.)

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#62

Post by narag » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 11:01 AM UTC

When I want to read both the article and the comments, or I don't know if I want to read the link at all (for the reasons others have said) the comments page has the link in it, while the linked page hasn't a link to the comments.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#63

Post by Angostura » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 11:35 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #31

I'm surprised how many people read the comments first. Should I pull the beginning of the leading comment text up onto the front page with the link, like Gmail does with the beginning of the message body? Or would that mess up the clean look, and fill up mobile screens too fast? There are other possible solutions short of that. E.g. I could add a button people can click on to say that an article is linkbait, or mista…

I would argue that people often read the comments because the headline-only format of YC leaves them guessing what the article is actually about.

If you are considering putting the leading comment text up there, please consider getting submitters to include a one sentence summary of the article instead.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#64

Post by c1sc0 » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 11:38 AM UTC

Almost always, the links are only an excuse for discussion, really. HN blurs the line between social news and traditional forums, and because of the quality of the comments that is just fine.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#65

Post by known » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 11:47 AM UTC

The quality of comments are excellent in HN and Slashdot.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#66

Post by almost » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 11:48 AM UTC

Often. I also find myself waiting until articles have comments before bothering with them.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#67

Post by whatusername » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 12:12 PM UTC

known wrote: post #65

The quality of comments are excellent in HN and Slashdot.

The quality of the best comments at /. are good. The quality of the average or mean, not so much.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#68

Post by atog » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 12:27 PM UTC

Comments first, always. Most of the time I don't even read the article.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#69

Post by Goladus » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 1:06 PM UTC

I sometimes read the comments first if the link looks looks like something that will be slow to load or full of annoying advertisements.

Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?

#70

Post by Goladus » Mon, Jan 12, 2009, 1:09 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #31

I'm surprised how many people read the comments first. Should I pull the beginning of the leading comment text up onto the front page with the link, like Gmail does with the beginning of the message body? Or would that mess up the clean look, and fill up mobile screens too fast? There are other possible solutions short of that. E.g. I could add a button people can click on to say that an article is linkbait, or mista…

That would be interesting, although in addition to clutter it will give the highest-ranked comment even more weight than it has already. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I click comments first because I know what I'm going to get, vs. clicking on a link that might not even finish loading before I get back to work. As far as that goes, having a preview wouldn't change much.