I think it's a wholly legitimate thing to do, and it requires no apology. I do it all the time. Pretty much every time I come across a new link here, I rapidly

I think it's a wholly legitimate thing to do, and it requires no apology. I do it all the time. Pretty much every time I come across a new link here, I rapidly and subconsciously run a few checks on it before clicking it open: 1) Is the title relevant to my interests? 2) How many upvotes has it received? 3) How many comments has it received? 4) (Upon scanning comments) Are the comments interesting? The only problem with this method is that it can tempt you to reply to comments without actually having read the article in question. That's bad form, of course.