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Suggest HN: Rank or Highlight TLDR Comments?

TLDR; Would love for TLDR comments to rank higher so we don't have to read "every" interesting article but can still get more out of the comments thread. Often a great article is posted on HN but you don't feel you have the time to read it (especially if it's a long one with detailed or complex info throughout). I'd love if people start a comment with "TLDR;" that it gets special treatment (ranked slightly higher by default or highlighted or something) in order to encourage people to provide a quick little bullet summary of articles. I think it could increase some valuable conversations without reducing the quality of them. Worth an experiment. Thoughts?

greenyoda 4y ago
I'd hesitate to jump to the conclusion that all "TL;DR" comments are helpful. Personally, I find most of them to be (1) either too simplistic to learn much about the article, or (2) sarcastic dismissals of the article (sometimes by people who don't seem to have even read it). A good summary of a long article would require at least a well-crafted paragraph, not a single sentence. So why not just rely on HN's already existing voting mechanism to figure out which comments should be promoted? If people find a particular "TL;DR" comment to be useful, they can upvote it, which causes it to move toward the top of the page. If they're not being upvoted, it suggests that most people aren't particularly enthusiastic about them. Also, giving preference to any comment that begins with "TL;DR" might encourage people to abuse the feature to get upvotes (since comments at the top of the page are more likely to be seen and upvoted). For example, they could begin every comment with a hasty and not particularly useful "TL;DR" even if several better summaries have already been posted. Then you'd have a sea of "TL;DR spam" cluttering the comments. Finally, a well-written article would have an introductory paragraph that summarizes what it's about. Any academic paper would have an abstract at the top. If you just click through to the article, you'll probably get a better summary than someone can put in a comment.

greenyoda 4y ago

I'd hesitate to jump to the conclusion that all "TL;DR" comments are helpful. Personally, I find most of them to be (1) either too simplistic to learn much about the article, or (2) sarcastic dismissals of the article (sometimes by people who don't seem to have even read it). A good summary of a long article would require at least a well-crafted paragraph, not a single sentence. So why not just rely on HN's already existing voting mechanism to figure out which comments should be promoted? If people find a particular "TL;DR" comment to be useful, they can upvote it, which causes it to move toward the top of the page. If they're not being upvoted, it suggests that most people aren't particularly enthusiastic about them. Also, giving preference to any comment that begins with "TL;DR" might encourage people to abuse the feature to get upvotes (since comments at the top of the page are more likely to be seen and upvoted). For example, they could begin every comment with a hasty and not particularly useful "TL;DR" even if several better summaries have already been posted. Then you'd have a sea of "TL;DR spam" cluttering the comments. Finally, a well-written article would have an introductory paragraph that summarizes what it's about. Any academic paper would have an abstract at the top. If you just click through to the article, you'll probably get a better summary than someone can put in a comment.