Ask HN: How many comments do you read on HN? Is it worth it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many comments do you read on HN? Is it worth it?

78 pointsabeaclark85 comments

Top posts get lots of comments ("Ask HN" especially). Do you read them all? Scan them all? Read only the top few? Is it worth the time?

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Many times, I will just read the comments. Since the commenters on some of these articles can be subject matter experts, sometimes reading the comments are more informative than the actual article itself. A particular example: if the article espouses a single viewpoint, the comments will shine the spotlight on alternative ways of seeing. The more esoteric the subject matter (e.g. Higgs boson), the more interesting the comments. I think my all-time favorite commenter is grellas [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas

At this point I read the comments more than the articles, too.

I wish there were a "favorite" feature for comments, because I'd certainly make use of it.

There is. Click the time above the comment, then click 'favorite' :-)

Favorited comments and stories are available from your user profile.

Note: Favorited comments and links are publicly visible.

Instructions unclear. I favorited this comment and the universe didn't implode.

On the subject of all-time favorite commenters, I have a soft spot for graycat's ruminations on his time at FedEx[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9281466 (sprinkled throughout the comments section)

Thanks so much for that link. High-quality campfire-chat material :)

I often use the comments as a filter for whether or not the article is going to be worth reading, or if the discussion in the thread is enough. HN is much more useful than reddit in this regard, especially on technical articles and topics.

Comments are what make HN/Reddit (on certain subreddits) so valuable. It provides a means for well-educated communities to discuss topics freely and casually, and to aggregate a number of diverse opinions that would be impossible/orders of magnitude slower and more limited prior to the Internet. And the format is much more appealing than IRC channels or typical forums.

The links are only half of the equation (perhaps less, to me).

I usually read the top comment and a few branches, then I scroll down and start reading from the bottom and upvote stuff that might have missed the cut.

I scan most comments but I usually don't read discussions that have become too long (more than 2 or 3 back and forth replies) unless they're really relevant.

Same as you, but I also aggressively use the [-] button to prune back side branches, allowing me to browse "wider" :-)

Me as well deeper is generally pointless arguing.

I usually read the comments before the posts.

And I save time using this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/best

https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments

Holy ... I did not know those features existed. That is awesome.

Is there a canonical list of all the hidden little urls and features?

https://news.ycombinator.com/lists

Missing from that list:

https://news.ycombinator.com/classic Front page with votes from older accounts

https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100 Front page with posts over n points

Wow, this is a complete gamechanger for how I use hn from now on. Thank you very much. Also I'm a bit surprised these features are not more exposed. Just how is one supposed to discover these lists?

Also missing: https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors

Thanks, it seems that that link is the list of users's preferences for the HN top bar color (the topcolor value from our user page). And the list seems to me ordered by the number of users with that color selected.

Thank you!

Is there any info on the cutoff for /classic?

2008-02-13. Pretty sure that's how it was when pg added that page, and if the dim and misty vaults of my memory can be trusted, it's because on 2008-02-14 there was a big influx of users from Reddit for some reason.

More often than not I read _only_ the comments and don't even bother to click the link unless one of the comments raises my curiosity.

The comments are what make HN good.

I will read the comments to see if people recommend it or tear it apart. If it passes muster, I click the link.

Often what happens is someone makes a comment without reading the article, then someone corrects them, and in the correction you get effectively a TLDR of what the core point of the article is about. Priceless timesaver :-)

The thing I like most about HN is the comments. Upvotes (and therefore discussion ranking) tend to be awarded to comments which add new knowledge and expertise to the discussion.

The format isn't the special sauce, which is very similar to Reddit. I think the special sauce is the audience doing the commenting and voting, who seem to me to be experts who enhance the content in the links.

Like several others, I confess to mostly just reading the comments here, and mostly not the articles (the headline is usually enough).

I'll check the comments if I'm interested in the topic, but aside from that I tend to avoid HN comments. The comments as a whole seem to be overly negative and contrarian...to the point where often there isn't a whole lot of value to be derived.

Isn't this comment negative and contrarian?

And this one really.

Touché

Negative and contrarian is the internet message board default. It still happens all the time on HN, but in my opinion there is often a prevailing attitude of constructiveness that other internet communities can't consistently emulate as well.

We fondly think of HN as the worst internet forum except for all the others.

That is perfect.

I have to say I adore the community here. Even though sometimes comment threads dive into slashdot level examinations of detail and occasional political mess at times, the discussions are typically quite enlightened and remind me a lot of early Internet communities. It's typically harder to find that community online due to the popularism that typically dominates mature online communities.

I come here for the comments. The "news" I can/do get elsewhere. I tend to read the first two comments and their children and then pop to the bottom and scroll up. Not every discussion contained under a posting is gold, but there are some really good points made frequently enough that its "worth it" to me. And, now, I flip through comments on a couple of posts when I previously would have gone to smoke a cigarette, so I'm not really wasting any more time than I already was. (I do miss the stand, stretch, walk and breathe deeply part of smoking, and would make a point of doing it more often if it didn't still make me want to smoke so badly!)

I probably scan at least 50% of the comments of the stories that reach the front page. (I.e. all of the comments on the 50% of the stories that I'm reasonably interested in.)

I'm relatively good at scanning large volumes of text but it's a bit of a chore. So far I feel it's worth the effort though. The comments are usually more interesting than the linked articles.

One note: While I do think HN is reasonably effective at ranking interesting stories, the ranking of the comments do leave something to be desired. I do feel like I need to scan all of the comments - something interesting/valuable is almost about as likely to appear towards the bottom of the comments page as towards the top.

I wonder if the quality difference in ranking stories vs comments is because the former can't be downvoted (only flagged), while the latter can.

The discussion is a big part of HN for me. Like early reddit, you often get experts in their field, or constructive, thoughtful criticism of an article.

Jokes and other low-effort replies are thoroughly discouraged.

> you often get experts in their field

It's difficult to tell who is an expert in their field since it often appears that someone is an expert simply because a) nobody is able to refute them (and who knows the qualifications, at any given time, of anyone reading comments at that moment and b) they appear at least to know more than you do.

I am often amazed at the well written comments here at HN. But then again I have often no clue how correct those comments are.

That's just generally the problem when reading sufficiently advanced expert commentary outside ones field though, isn't it? Many times deep experts in the same field are themselves the only ones capable of calling bs.

I remember a thread on rocketry when spacex was going through it that was pretty much Greek to me, but folks were chatting away with one another and arguing all kinds of things I had never heard of. Great hn thread.

I come here for the comments. The links you can find elsewhere. A calm community able to discuss topics? Now that's gold.

I like Ask HN, but I am selective about which other threads I get too deep into the comments on. Many of the discussions on here break down into quibbles over wording or minor points. Or pointless, showboating pedantry.

When I do go comment diving, I'm looking for substance. Not grammar, spelling, or minor wording or terminology back-and-forth.

Show HN is often just as insightful in my experience. Both the quality of the criticism/feedback from the HN community and the opportunity to hear directly from team members involved in the project are often exceptional.

I usually write a comment, read other people's comments and then read the article. In that order ;)

Jokes aside, I actually do tend to value the content of HN comments more than the actual links. Very often, only the comments are read-worthy and not the linked articles. Sometimes, neither are read-worthy. After browsing HN for years, things tend to repeat. Yes, we know C++ templates are turing-complete. Yes, we know IoT often has terrible security. Yes, we know depression and burnout are bad. Yes, we know functional programming is super awesome. It repeats over and over.

I only skim the top comments though (and maybe their direct answers) and I only visit HN when I'm bored. Hackernews makes me restless and unproductive.

I agree with you about the perennial repetition, though of course these things are always new to somebody. What are some articles you've seen on HN recently that don't make you restless and unproductive (if there are any)?

Good question. The ones that are in my favourites, that'd be the quick answer ;)

I value posts with very high raw information content and some humour to go along with it. With information content, I mean stuff like "in C++, use virtual destructors on objects that inherit if you make use of polymorphism" but NOT stuff like "Stop Checking Email So Often" which is an actual example that is on the frontpage right now. Without having looked at the article, I can already tell that it was written by someone who is required to churn out articles even if they don't have anything to say.

I focus on the top say 50% OF high level comments. I find that the more nested a chain gets in general it becomes more off topic and more like an argument of people trying to one-up each other.

I scan the top 25% of the initial high level comments and if I don't see anything interesting I move on. I know that sometimes newer comments show up at the very top so I push through those to make sure I get to the higher upvoted ones.

Maybe we should add a way to show/hide degrees of nesting in a thread. In state 0, show only top-level comments, state 1, show top-level plus replies, etc.

Yes, please.

Echoing GFischer and scott_karana that my own browsing habits tend to mirror theirs. It's definitely worth it, there's not really a better general tech discussion forum anywhere on the web right now.

I read the comments a lot. Compared to most news sites this be a utopia of brilliant discourse. Most comment sections on other websites make me want to die.

I read the comments quite a lot, particularly now that you can hide whole threads and really focus on threads you are interested in. I think its been great for keeping a view on the lower rated threads that are more relevant to you interest. There are often some real gems at the bottom of the page.

There are commenters I like and ones I dread, I've experimented with extensions to allow notes and highlight colors / imagery to make it easier to find comments and prompt my poor memory for some information about the poster. If I ever get something I like, I'll release it, but the first efforts have been ick.

Definitely, specifically concerning subjects that are high level such as crypto, compilers, language design etc.. There are subject matter experts here who give a trove of information for free on HN that I would easily pay money to hear at a conference or lecture. I particularly enjoyed the recent "Rust vs. GO" thread where local folks broke down the advantages/disadvantages of both languages without dissolving in a flame war. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13430108

I read all comments unless the page has grown out of control. It's the articles in question that I don't bother to read - I depend on HNers to reveal what the article said. I have dead posts turned on too.

While I also find the comments more compelling than the links themselves, sometimes a thread degenerates and gets marooned on Pointless Island. It helps to be able to identify PI from a distance and hence stay away.

When that happens, you (and everyone!) are welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com. We mark such subthreads off topic, which ranks them much lower—but we don't always see them. I hate showing up to a thread a day late and finding pointlessness at the top!

This is a tragedy-of-the-commons dynamic. Individuals can be well-intentioned and even mostly rational and we still end up with these suboptima. That's why it's necessary for someone like us to come through and do the vacuuming. Point us there and we'll do it, and send you a nice reply as well.

Whether or not I read the comments is strongly correlated with how technical the subject is. My general process goes:

- View an interesting-sounding title in my RSS reader

- Click on the link to the HN comments

- Scan the top comments to see if the article is clickbait/insubstantial

- If it is not, read the article

- Either return to HN and read most/all of the comments or close both tabs, depending on the subject

I rarely find the comments on political links here particularly useful or informative, but I've derived a tremendous amount of value from the conversation on technical links.

If it's an article I'm interested in, I'll generally read all the comments. If I want to bring up a particular point, I'll skim them to see if it's been brought up already and then read that tree of comments and post there if I still want/need to. I pay close attention to grayed out comments when I'm reading in order to make sure they are justified and up-vote them if I don't agree with the down-votes.

I usually read the entire comments section on HN. There's a high signal-to-noise ratio and a "big" discussion is only maybe 300-400 comments.

I personally come to HN more for the comments than anything else. It's much more focused and positive than other communities like Reddit

I scan all the comment sin a thread I'm interested in, and usually read them, including the dead/flagged ones. Obviously I think it's worth it or I wouldn't keep doing it, but sometimes I get sucked into conversations I didn't really want to participate in. I delete unfinished comments and leave the thread about as often as I post.

HN has an awesome community so I generally read more. I start of with the top ones (and their branches) and agressively use the (-), and then follow down.

If it's something I'm really interested about, I check back in ~12 hours to see if something new has shown up - at which point it's a scan to see the new comments.

I really like the comments section, and conversations overall are constructive.

There are however not so constructive conversations once in a while, but it's usually people that must have the last word, rather than irrational discussions.

I have started using the favorite so I can read them later, it helps. I have about a thousand saved links that I'll never read, but I like knowing I can go find something I've seen if need be.

It varies from topic to topic so I usually check the threads. Sometimes you find great stuff. Other times you just find the prevailing groupthink. I think it's at least useful to look.

I read HN by going to a set of commenters threads and seeing what is driving their interesting discussions. The articles that drive those threads tend to have the most value to me.

Same! I have no idea how people would, like, start at the top of the front page and read their way down. I sometimes skim for security stories, but otherwise I start from a list of commenters.

  >> otherwise I start from a list of commenters.

Perhaps ironically, that is how I found this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek

Comments like this one, you're reading now, are really worth it.

If the topic interests me I quickly browse through the comments. Quite often I find them interesting / added value. Sometimes they are also just rather white noise of the internet.

Some discussions around technical solutions people deployed are interesting. I was recently reading an old thread about challanges with replication of postgres-xl nodes (!) :-)

I usually have a Comments first approach. Read the top 3-4 comments and if I find the subject interesting I read the post. Sometimes the comments are so interesting though that I have to read them all before clicking the post. Sometimes I skip the post.

Most of the value is in the comments, specially during these times where a lot of content on the web has a commercial purpose.

Absolutely worth it !!! Sometimes comments are better than original content..so many beautiful minds here

I really appreciate the quality and intelligence of most HN comments. I think that is one thing that sets it apart from Reddit/FB/etc. For topics I'm interested in, I do generally scan them and not necessarily read all comments every time.

Some articles are essentially one big comment, a single person's point of view. At least with comment threads you can get some idea if a comment is controversial or well accepted. You don't get that you only read the articles.

I always read the comments, though sometimes I dread it. For certain subjects I'll know well in advance what most of the comments will be, and they can be surprisingly ignorant and negative.

I read top comments and keep reading comment threads until they get boring.

If discussion is interesting - I read more comments.

I may even decide to read the original article is discussion is good.

HN is one of the few sites I even bother with the comments.

About ten per day.

Yes, it's definitely worth it, if you are selective.

"read not to contradict and confute, but to weigh and consider" ~ sir francis bacon.

The comments are HN are often well worth reading.

The consensus here is the inverse of the old Playboy joke: "I only read it for the articles."

I have found a lot of gems in the HN comments Way better than most of the stories themselves