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I understand the urge to summarize, but maybe interested HN users can be expected to read the article before coming to the comments? This seriously degrades the
by ricardobeat 7y ago
I understand the urge to summarize, but maybe interested HN users can be expected to read the article before coming to the comments? This seriously degrades the quality of discussion.
- pmelendez 7y agoThere is a popular trend where people will read the comments first and depending on the discussion they move to read the article
- gshdg 7y agoI’d call it a tactic, not a trend. It’s been around since the advent of halfway decent comment sections.
- amundsentb 7y agoI am often more interested in the comments here than the content of the article so I am happy with the summary. I can often understand what the article is about and go to the comment section for pros and cons
- ricardobeat 7y agoFor reading, maybe, but it's a lot harder to contribute something meaningful if you don't know the context to start with.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoIt's fine to bemoan people commenting who haven't read the article, but reading the comments first to gauge if the article is clickbait/whatever is a perfectly valid use-case. I also cherish summaries like these - if I read the whole article I won't remember more than 2 sentences of it tomorrow. That distillation process is inevitable and good. It's a service to do it well for those who are time/memory-limited.
- unityByFreedom 7y agoThanks! At the time I wrote this, the majority of comments were focused on criticizing the headline [1], and there was little discussion of the article itself. Now I see there are many comments about the content of the article. I don't know if the summary caused more people to read it or not. I wanted to encourage more readership and on-topic discussion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20541644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20541644