Unsolicited Advice is a Valuable Clue

What really wastes time is clicking through some link and reading five paragraphs of something that turns out to either be linkbait, or something that many of us have seen a dozen times before. Of course, many people think that the solution to this problem should be "never submit something that's similar to something that's been submitted before", but that turns out to be wrong, because new people arrive all the time, and they need an education in the basics. And the basics keep getting updated with new examples and new variants -- sometimes I really would rather read a restatement of something Fred Brooks said in 1978 than the Fred Brooks itself. But sometimes I wouldn't, because I'm too busy.

Perhaps the rise of these summaries demonstrates that submission titles aren't being crafted well, or that the technique for linking to stories is missing a "teaser" feature. Ever notice how many magazine stories have both a clever title and a short, one-or-two sentence teaser that talks a bit about what the story is actually about? (Nonfiction book titles utilize a variant of this strategy: a clever first title and a descriptive subtitle, separated by a colon, as in "Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West"). Many submissions have clever titles, but often what we really want is the teasers.

My main problem with the summaries (I have more than one but let me be brief ;) is this: Imagine if I replied to your comment with this:

Summary: Sometimes it's useful.

This is what you've said, but you provided one counter-argument to my comment, one personal explanation, one extrapolation on what I've said.

Then you expanded your first point, provided an example of recent problems on HN and how the summary might be a solution, then you've answered my question.

So, you see, you wrote something with an introduction, expanded on the premises, and a conclusion. You didn't just say "sometimes they're useful".

This is awesome, it's content. This is a quality conversation.

By reading one-liners, or depending on them to see if you're going to read the article, you're missing all the little stuff that separates the good from the bad.

For example, the summary that I replied on this thread "gets" that an advice on the interview is about how work there is done, but it completely misses the bigger point, made on the last paragraph. The article isn't really only about interview, but life in general. It's about reading between the lines, about empathy and communication.

By the way, I've flagged the article based on this. The main idea is solid (you've got to learn how to read people) but the execution was flawed. Besides, it's off-topic IMHO.

And this means we already have tools to deal with the quality of articles here. Votes and flags. One line summaries don't give enough context.

Besides, if you're inclined to believe in the summaries before reading the article, who can garantee that it reflects what the article is saying accurately?

Also, summaries add nothing to the discussion. Imagine loading this page and reading how I made coffe this morning. Comments waste very little screen space and time (by design) (ugh... cheap shot I know ;), but why would I want to read something that:

- Doesn't add content to the article; - Doesn't start a discussion;

So why have a comment that isn't meant to foster conversation, to provide insights? Otherwise, after my coffe, I moved a candy out of the table because ants were all over it :p

And yes: I posted a comment because without comments I wouldn't read a link in the first place, and others may think likewise. So that's my motivation.

Yes. Welcome to the cruel world of information overload, where I don't have time to read 95% of the brilliantly crafted content that is being created on the Internet, to say nothing of the stupid stuff.

Yes, judging books by their cover blurbs and reviews is haphazard, even cruel. Yes, you miss out on a lot of good detail. Yes, it remains absolutely necessary.

I have to judge what to click on by: The title, a skim through the comments, and the link destination (which I actually find most significant -- I clicked through on this and read the real thing specifically because it had Powazek's URL on it, and his last article really hit home.)

Incidentally, "sometimes it's useful" is a terrible post because it has no content and is banal [1], not because it is short. There's a distinction between empty sentences and brief sentences! The summary we're all pointing fingers at had a lot of content, even if it wasn't anywhere near as pleasureable as the actual article.

Meanwhile, a parenthetical note: The flagging system is for things that are "spam or egregiously offtopic". And if you live in a happy land where you seriously believe that "how to avoid working in unacceptable situations" is egregiously offtopic for hackers, congratulations! I hope your amazing run of luck continues, for your sake. Because, in my world, Powazek's advice comes in handy on a monthly basis.

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[1] Just about any comment on a site can be useful sometimes. Even "first post" is useful: It demonstrates that the comments are working and that the comment moderation is very sloppy.