Ask YC: Stats on Commenting before Reading | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Stats on Commenting before Reading

5 pointsDaniFong13 comments

Occasionally, I read a comment that seems to plainly ignore the main points of the article: the comment seems to have posted, a'la Slashdot, before they've even read it.

I wonder if my impressions are correct? Do many people comment before clicking the article, or within a minute or so after they hit the comments page? We could filter out replies to subcomments -- I'm just interested in whether or not the Slashdot peanut gallery is starting to be replicated here.

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Sometimes I comment without reading when the title of an article suggests it's something that could (and thus probably should) be answered in a sentence or two.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180036

Unfortunately, another, connected problem that seems fairly frequent is that of misleading titles which bear no resemblance to the title or content of the linked article. Particularly when it's reprased as a question the article doesn't ask (or attempt to answer). I'm never sure what to do in that case - upvote it because the article was good, or not, because it was misrepresented on n.YC.

Often times, someone will write a comment stating a fact, regardless of the article, that may be completely untrue, completely idiotic, etc., that can warrant a reply without the need to read an article. Other than that, chiming in with criticisms and opinions without reading is stupid.

Oh, I didn't notice the second paragraph.

Irony.

I'm not sure if comments that plainly ignore the main points of the article are totally, or even mostly, from people before they've even read it. They may be from people who just don't get it, whether from skimming or not paying close enough attention.

And I don't see how filtering out replies to subcomments solves anything. Often those are the most interesting conversations. I suppose one could have +/- to expand subcomments easily.

It's precisely because I'm unsure about this that I want to look at the data.

I apologize for the ambiguity -- I didn't mean to suggest removing the ability to subcomment, only that the data I want is the proportion of people commenting on an article before reading or rapidly after their first click -- and whether that proportion is changing substantially.

I post comments all the time that have nothing to do with the main point of the article. That doesn't mean I haven't read it. Usually it just means the article reminded me of something that I thought other people would find useful.

But this behavior wouldn't trigger my alarms unless it's changing in magnitude over time for lots of different people. Whereas, I fear a portion of our new users do this on a fairly regular basis -- which would show an increase in the 'commented before read proportion'. Is this actually happening? I'm not sure.

One behavior I think is good, is to disclose that you actually didn't read the article at the beginning of the comment.

I think this behavior should be generally accepted if you actually read the other comments as to not duplicate something that was already said.

Well, you could use on of the YC post datasets and come up with the stats yourself? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182374

Is there access to click data in that dataset? I wouldn't suspect so, because it's kind of a privacy concern.

There have always been comments like that. I think sometimes it's from not reading the article, sometimes from skimming and overlooking important parts.

I try and read before posting but if the title is descriptive enough (I assume) then I don't.

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