> ... the signal:noise ratio of the comments is vastly superior to all but the very best and rarest articles. <rant> Not for those of us who RTFA and then com

> ... the signal:noise ratio of the comments is vastly superior to all but the very best and rarest articles. <rant> Not for those of us who RTFA and then come to the comments, only to have to sift through numerous comments asking questions or discussing things that were clearly answered in TFA. That simply leads to the situation where those who don't bother to RTFA end up wasting the time of everyone who does, lowering the S/N ratio for us, eventually causing some of us to then stop reading the articles and skipping straight to the comments, and the cycle repeats over and over. Eventually, we'll get to the point where nobody reads the articles -- and the entire purpose of the comments is (or, at least, was) to discuss what was in the article! --- Sorry, it's a huge pet peeve and, to me, it's no different than someone asking a large group of people (here, on a mailing list or group chat, etc.) a "simple question" that, with a minute or two's worth of effort they could have easily found the answer to themselves. Sure, they might have saved a minute or two of their time but, when you think about it, what they really did is wasted a minute or two of "n" other's people time. Or, to put it another way, it shows a complete lack of respect for other people and their time (and basic courtesy in general). I can be fairly impatient, though, so perhaps it's just me. Anyways, it's 0333 so I should probably just log off HN and go to bed! I'll blame my little rant on exhaustion and lack of sleep. :-) </rant>