Please read the paper before you comment • Hacker News Board

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#81

Post by jagraff » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

Ansil849 wrote: post #62

cgrealy wrote: post #48

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…

Ha, brilliant. Kind of the equivalent of how sometimes students put in random sentences in essays submitted for classes, to demonstrate that their teachers don't fully read their work. Or how surveys can have nonsense questions/answer options to weed out people not reading the questions.

In college I used to take psychological studies for extra beer money. The tests would have the standard scale (rate from 1-5 your agreement with statement x), except a random page of each test would have instructions to ignore the prompt, and just to mark all of the answers a certain way. Same concept, weed out the people who ignore the instructions and just fill in random answers.

I always wondered what would happen if I incorrectly answered those questions - would they still pay me? But I prefer cash to the truth

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#82

Post by sebmellen » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

evolve2k wrote: post #2

When I first learnt to program the thing that I really enjoyed was learning to make a terminal app that took in the users input and used it as a conditional. I’d make all these little toy apps where my family had to type in the right word to continue. Eg “Who is the leader of the autobots?” => “Well done. Transform and roll out!!” It strikes me we could encourage better discourse with one word locked comments that th…

I adore this idea, and it's brilliant. It would get me to stop commenting on things I have no business commenting on, and make me consider whether or not I really want to read a certain article.

And, of course, the more honest and balanced discourse we can have the better. This is one of the reasons I appreciate HN over other social media.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#83

Post by ayyy » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

iliketosleep wrote: post #72

cgrealy wrote: post #48

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…

What it demonstrates is that people have already made up their mind on the topic and aren't genuinely interested in new perspectives. This helps explains the inflammatory nature of Internet debates in general.

Good information has a long tail. The first time anything is posted, the internet is going to shit on it, regardless of what it is. But good content is sticky, and people doing serious research will be able to dig it up.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#84

Post by wutwutwutwut » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

drivebycomment wrote: post #35

I mean, this applies to many of the discussions on HN too. I've noticed that there's so many people getting the facts around the topic completely wrong, and quite a few will push some simplistic narrative or long-standing grievances, instead of the relevant point which often is subtle and nuanced. I suppose that's just being human.

It's not just getting the facts wrong, it's often about them misunderstanding the topic entirely because they didn't bother to read.

I don't think it's about being human, I think it's because HN is a BBS where people can get points by chatting, which also happens to link to articles which you can read if you feel like it. Of course this is how it ends up.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#85

Post by onetimemanytime » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

iliketosleep wrote: post #72

cgrealy wrote: post #48

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…

What it demonstrates is that people have already made up their mind on the topic and aren't genuinely interested in new perspectives. This helps explains the inflammatory nature of Internet debates in general.

a third of the title is enough, never mind the aticle ;)

depends on the topic, an article isn't going to convince a political party supporter to switch sides for example.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#86

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

cgrealy wrote: post #48

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…

I'm certain that social networks have played a large role, if not the sole reason for this behaviour by encouraging limited attention, FOMO, OCD-scrolling etc. But, I guess we wouldn't able to prove that more people read the content before commenting before social networks without a proper control and besides many visitors of these sites are from social networks.

All major News organisations know that only small fraction of their audience on social networks even click the link anymore and rest of them just make up what they wanted from the title and description. At least now I think, Facebook doesn't allow one to alter the title, description of the website they're sharing; for years someone who shares could change those as well!

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#87

Post by blueblimp » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

KTallguy wrote: post #69

Covzire wrote: post #40

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.

In lieu of browsing Twitter directly, I've been using this service lately: https://fraidyc.at/ 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.

Huh, for a while I've been wanting almost exactly this. I simulate it on Twitter by using a lot of (private) lists and sometimes navigating to single users, but that's clunky.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#88

Post by lmm » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

wutwutwutwut wrote: post #84

drivebycomment wrote: post #35

I mean, this applies to many of the discussions on HN too. I've noticed that there's so many people getting the facts around the topic completely wrong, and quite a few will push some simplistic narrative or long-standing grievances, instead of the relevant point which often is subtle and nuanced. I suppose that's just being human.

It's not just getting the facts wrong, it's often about them misunderstanding the topic entirely because they didn't bother to read. I don't think it's about being human, I think it's because HN is a BBS where people can get points by chatting, which also happens to link to articles which you can read if you feel like it. Of course this is how it ends up.

People play the game according to the rules they're given. In the early days when HN was more caustic, you got more points by reading the articles and posting accurate facts. But in the dang era where comments are required to be nice and calling people out is discouraged, you get more points by rushing to post something plausible-sounding and vaguely related to the headline. So people do that instead, unsurprisingly.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#89

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #30

renewiltord wrote: post #14

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.

Oh, I just see if they comment on things that are obviously revealed by the article. I don't think there's any real difference to me whether someone reads the article and then posts a statement trivially answered by the article and whether they don't read the article.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#90

Post by drivebycomment » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

wutwutwutwut wrote: post #84

drivebycomment wrote: post #35

I mean, this applies to many of the discussions on HN too. I've noticed that there's so many people getting the facts around the topic completely wrong, and quite a few will push some simplistic narrative or long-standing grievances, instead of the relevant point which often is subtle and nuanced. I suppose that's just being human.

It's not just getting the facts wrong, it's often about them misunderstanding the topic entirely because they didn't bother to read. I don't think it's about being human, I think it's because HN is a BBS where people can get points by chatting, which also happens to link to articles which you can read if you feel like it. Of course this is how it ends up.

Given very similar issues with low information or misinformation voters, I am not convinced it's due to HN being a BBS with points.