Almost always, as the comments let me decide whether I should bother reading the actual link at all.
Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
71–80 of 88 posts
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#72I'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…
Any time you're surprised at how often people read the comments, go read a few YouTube comments.
I like that I can be wrong or disagreeable here without getting called names. And that folks who know way more than me will show up and say stuff on the topics I'm curious about.
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#73I'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…
There is another problem, you can't really go to the comments /after/ going to the article, but you can go to the article after the comments.
Unless you add a toolbar option like reddit has.
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#74The 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.
Yes. Setting comment Threshold to 4 will fetch best comments from /.
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#75I'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 usually read the comments because I'm slashdot-hooked. One /. meme is to not RTFA. :p
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#76This is my default mode when reading HN.
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#77I'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…
Leading comment as a tooltip?
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#78I'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…
Paul,
I'd like some (low-key) visual indication for the text of "comments" links that I've already visited, as a reminder that I've already looked at the comments.
Although with the HN page's clean design, I'm not imagining right now what specifically would fit unobtrusively.
With HN, my memory is better as to what I've examined. Actually, I've commented on reddit a time or two on the desirability of this feature. There's so much clutter over there these days, that I'd like a reminder for those links where I examined the comments and decided to go no further.
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#79The quality of comments are excellent in HN and Slashdot.
On Slashdot, I find that the comments often immediately debunk the article or point out some glaring flaw in the headline / post. I'm so used to this that I'd rather be let down by someone telling me that the article is bogus up front, than to get pumped up about it reading the article then read the comment that debunks it.
Re: Ask YC: Do any of you find yourself reading comments before the actual link?
#80If you click comments first, then link, even without reading the comments, now your browser back button is more useful and you won't have to find the story again.