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If you get a summary of a thread and the most interesting things therein, you can better decide if you want to read the thread in whole or not. This helps you f

If you get a summary of a thread and the most interesting things therein, you can better decide if you want to read the thread in whole or not. This helps you focus your time on the threads you are really interested in. Right now, when I find a 1000 comments long page at H.N., I might read a bit at the top, then scroll down a bit randomly, read some comments, and then go on to some other topic. Most threads I don't read — I don't have the time — and I think I miss many interesting things. I think I'd want accurate summaries that helped me find and focus on the "right" threads.

krapp 12y ago
But discussion threads aren't articles. I don't believe they can be summarized with fine-grained precision as if they were, because by definition the quality they provide is primarily to the participants, and terms like "interesting", or "meaningful" or "right" are entirely subjective. You see this phenomenon whenever someone complains about why a particular story is popular. Any number of people have completely opposing ideas of what Hacker News should be. Everything one person finds interesting is completely noise to someone else. You could apply user-level filters to the threads, I suppose - choose longer words over shorter, or longer posts over shorter posts, remove posts with words or phrases you object to. Hacker News could mitigate this single-channel effect by allowing tags or sub-boards, but I believe their solution so far is for the mods to manually tweak things when some stories get too popular. The site already puts high-karma posts at the top, which is supposed to act as a qualifier through consensus. But to me, it seems the more you try to engineer the experience of discovery though automation, the less likely it is you'll discover things which might be interesting, but unexpected.
- KajMagnus 12y ago
  If threads can usually be summarized in a way that most people think is useful, that's an interesting question. I'm thinking it varies from discussion to discussion and thread to thread. — Hmm, one area where summaries seem impossible, is jokes. Well unless one summarizes the thread with "A joke and funny replies". Threads cannot be summarized? But I think I can summarize this thread?: "A suggestion to summarize threads, and a discussion about if this is doable and useful." :-) Couldn't that summary potentially save time, help people to know if they want to read this thread or not?
  - krapp 12y ago
    You've just described the function of the title, though, as the subject of the thread, which only has (as of now) a couple of rather short subthreads. It might not be that easy if you're talking about a 100+ comment thread, with various tangents, each of which might be interesting in their own way. What if the content you want is not directly related to the subject at hand? The longer a thread becomes (particularly using a threaded format like HN does) the more divergent the subthreads become.
    - KajMagnus 12y ago
      Did you mean that my summary was a title, not a summary? I didn't quite understand "described the function of the title". Right now I'm thinking only poorly written comments and off-topic threads would benefit from being summarized. A good comment starts with attracting attention and interest, and a summary would destroy that. A poorly written comment though, it might be verbose and chatty, and it might make the discussion stray off-topic. Then, instead of just collapsing a not-so-popular off-topic thread and showing the text "Click to view 33 comments", one could show a summary: "Click to view a suggestion to summarize threads and a discussion about if doing so makes sense (33 comments)". Or "Click to view a joke (5 comments)". (I agree this is getting complicated for long threads that branches off in many directions.)
      - krapp 12y ago
        > I didn't quite understand "described the function of the title". Sorry, I meant the purpose of the title was to do what you did - to briefly summarize a post. Since it's your thread, obviously, it would be easy for you to describe your own intent, but it might be much more difficult to do analytically.

krapp 12y ago

But discussion threads aren't articles. I don't believe they can be summarized with fine-grained precision as if they were, because by definition the quality they provide is primarily to the participants, and terms like "interesting", or "meaningful" or "right" are entirely subjective. You see this phenomenon whenever someone complains about why a particular story is popular. Any number of people have completely opposing ideas of what Hacker News should be. Everything one person finds interesting is completely noise to someone else. You could apply user-level filters to the threads, I suppose - choose longer words over shorter, or longer posts over shorter posts, remove posts with words or phrases you object to. Hacker News could mitigate this single-channel effect by allowing tags or sub-boards, but I believe their solution so far is for the mods to manually tweak things when some stories get too popular. The site already puts high-karma posts at the top, which is supposed to act as a qualifier through consensus. But to me, it seems the more you try to engineer the experience of discovery though automation, the less likely it is you'll discover things which might be interesting, but unexpected.

KajMagnus 12y ago
If threads can usually be summarized in a way that most people think is useful, that's an interesting question. I'm thinking it varies from discussion to discussion and thread to thread. — Hmm, one area where summaries seem impossible, is jokes. Well unless one summarizes the thread with "A joke and funny replies". Threads cannot be summarized? But I think I can summarize this thread?: "A suggestion to summarize threads, and a discussion about if this is doable and useful." :-) Couldn't that summary potentially save time, help people to know if they want to read this thread or not?
- krapp 12y ago
  You've just described the function of the title, though, as the subject of the thread, which only has (as of now) a couple of rather short subthreads. It might not be that easy if you're talking about a 100+ comment thread, with various tangents, each of which might be interesting in their own way. What if the content you want is not directly related to the subject at hand? The longer a thread becomes (particularly using a threaded format like HN does) the more divergent the subthreads become.
  - KajMagnus 12y ago
    Did you mean that my summary was a title, not a summary? I didn't quite understand "described the function of the title". Right now I'm thinking only poorly written comments and off-topic threads would benefit from being summarized. A good comment starts with attracting attention and interest, and a summary would destroy that. A poorly written comment though, it might be verbose and chatty, and it might make the discussion stray off-topic. Then, instead of just collapsing a not-so-popular off-topic thread and showing the text "Click to view 33 comments", one could show a summary: "Click to view a suggestion to summarize threads and a discussion about if doing so makes sense (33 comments)". Or "Click to view a joke (5 comments)". (I agree this is getting complicated for long threads that branches off in many directions.)
    - krapp 12y ago
      > I didn't quite understand "described the function of the title". Sorry, I meant the purpose of the title was to do what you did - to briefly summarize a post. Since it's your thread, obviously, it would be easy for you to describe your own intent, but it might be much more difficult to do analytically.