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Ask HN: Do you read the article or the comments section first when browsing HN?
Of course you may have different protocols for different types of posts.
Personally, I find reading the comments section gives a good taste of the thesis of the article, and sometimes the thoughts of the commenters are way more insightful than the article itself.
- robteix 9y agoI almost invariably read the HN comments first. In fact I often read _only_ the comments and end up never visiting the actual article
- davidpelayo 9y agoYeah me too. That's why I (we) created the HN Notifier Chrome plugin, to subscribe to any thread and get notifications when new comments are posted.
- dmschulman 9y agoThe article then the comments generally, I want the context before I get to the conversation. There are other instances when I get the gist from the headline and don't care about the story, but want to read what others have to say (for example, the current front page story about New Zealand banning foreigners from buying new houses in the country. Headline says it all but there must be something interesting to talk about if a story like that garners 444 comments)
- mswen 9y agoComments first
- kahlonel 9y agoAlmost always the article first. Its easy to jump to conclusions by just reading the comments, without ever touching the article; which is bad.
- jaredtking 9y agoHN comments first. I read the article before contributing to the discussion though.
- PeachPlum 9y agoComments - to read "this is bullshit and here's why" before going in
- catacombs 9y agoI'm with you on that.
- davchana 9y agoComments 99% of the time; and that too only the first few. Things push me to go back are: too long paragraphs of text, name-calling, insulting the other posters, too much technical scientific jargon. Things I continue reading: Perfectly spaced 5/6 lines of paragraphs, explaining without sounding smart :)
- twobyfour 9y agoDepends on the section and topic. New posts section is article first, then read the comments and add my own. There are two reasons I visit the HN front page instead of getting all my news off comment-free aggregators like Google News or more specialized equivalents. Reason #1 is that often HN surfaces articles on topics that I wouldn't see anywhere else without a lot of digging through noise. Those I usually click straight through to the article and skip the comments. Reason #2 is that sometimes I've already read about a topic elsewhere and feel strongly about it and want to express myself or hear how the larger community is thinking about it. Because someone is wrong on the internet! Those I dive into the comments first. Occasionally an article will satisfy both reasons, and then I'll do both but the order of operations depends on how well informed I already feel about the topic. The better informed, the more likely to start with the comments.
- jryan49 9y agoComments