Usually the title of an article is a poor indication of the article's content, structure and tone. By skimming the comments I can usually get some idea of these

Usually the title of an article is a poor indication of the article's content, structure and tone. By skimming the comments I can usually get some idea of these attributes and then decide if it's an article that interests me. Also, the HN comments often load much faster than the page itself (full of crazy JavaScript, CSS, ads, useless graphics, etc).