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

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

#81

Post by kirubakaran »

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 could add a button people can click on to say that an article is linkbait, or mistaken, or whatever, and display icons to indicate this.

This is a great idea.

Also, it will help if we can see the sum of comment points on the front page.

  1. Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors (mitre.org)
     14 points by petercooper 1 hour ago | 10 comments [20 points]
Comment link can be bigger.

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

#82

Post by nihaar »

alecco wrote: post #60
tptacek wrote: post #36

50/50.

Same here, it all depends about the target domain. For example I'd never click a Seth Godin, Zed Shaw, or any other self-promotion writer link but the HN discussion tends to be very constructive. I always click links to Wikipedia, New Yorker, Wired, and many other good sources (from experience.) Perhaps a feature could be a Agree/disagree vote for stories to distinguish from up-voting the HN discussion.

I agree. I use the comments thread as a secondary filter if I a. am not already familiar with the domain of the link, b. the story has a very sensational heading or c. feel it might a self-promoting link.

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

#83

Post by code_devil »

I actually use the HN comments to get a feel of what the article is all about and if I see a lot of +ve vibe I venture out to read the article. I also find scanning over the comments as a way to get the gist of the article without reading it.

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

#84

Post by dfranke »

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…

/. uses tagging for this and I think it works well.

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

#85

Post by michaelneale »

alecco wrote: post #61
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…

programming at reddit used to be good, but the noise ratio got a bit too high - but I should check it out again (I was specifically referring to the rest of reddit, which is rediculous - so much so that I find it hard to take any subreddit seriously). I am sure there is a lot of brilliance there, but who has time for it with all the noise?

I prefer the tone of HN - there are certainly less arguments, but I don't think that's a bad thing - there are plenty of other places on the internet to have an argument.

There is no need for HN to become /r/programming when it already exists. HN was previously startup news - so I guess it keeps a bit of that flavour.

I haven't really noticed any website bashing from HN.

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

#86

Post by anamax »

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'd like to see the plus and minus votes (or the total number of votes), not just the sum. There's a huge difference between an article/comment that only 3 people voted on vs an article that 103 people voted on.

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

#88

Post by chromakode »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #27

Yes. Actually, this is one reason I like the socialite firefox plugin for reddit. Letting me access the comments directly from the link is exactly what I need. Going back to the main page to find the comments link after I've read the link is a pain in the ass. Maybe I could hack this together for HN....

Socialite is designed with a modular structure, making it possible to support other sites. It would be feasible to write a Hacker News module to exist alongside reddit support. If you'd be interested in hacking on it, I'd be pleased to work with you.

-C

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