Ask HN: Would you like this feature on HN?

No, I don't think so.

Firstly, I don't think it's necessary. I'm willing to bet some of the best posts on the site come from people who hadn't read the article.

Secondly, this isn't really a feature, it's at best the germ of an idea of what the core of a feature might be.

What's to stop people from just lying and saying they've read it or intend to but they haven't read it and don't intend to? Is there any way to meaningfully (and probably automatically) detect that behavior?

Is there a punishment for lying and participating without reading first?

What about if someone has a lot of knowledge about what the article is covering, but hadn't read the actual article? Can they still participate in the conversation without running afoul of this system? They should be able to.

What about cases where the comment section has diverged slightly from the topic in the article anyways?

Really, what's the end goal of such a feature and how would you measure if you accomplish it?

I think you'd have to answer all or most of those questions before it could become a feature.

Absolutely not! Some of the best discussions are inspired by the worst posts. Short, misinformed, badly written blog posts not worth reading in any way can set off lengthy, fascinating discussions on here. People frequently wonder aloud why on earth the posts were upvoted, but it's the discussion that's upvoted—the votes are apparently to encourage more comments, where the comments already present were very good reading.

More useful, though still not a good idea, would be requiring commenters first to read the other comments, as often a comment repeats what another has already said—although with hundreds of comments, this becomes increasingly impractical.

Sounds like bit of mirroring recent facebook test feature where user has to confirm it read the article before sharing it [1].

[1] - (https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/10/facebook-pop-up-read-befor...)

I see no point in implementing such feature here.

How would you verify that they aren't lying? This is somewhere near the evil bit.

No, I don't think this is required.

That would be pointless.

No

No, rather I think the rule against implying someone hasn't read the article should be rescinded, and we should be more aggressive in calling it out.

People act as if engaging with content outside of the title and comments is a waste of their time, or they only read TFA until they find something to snark about, or they just rant about javascript and ad blockers. Closed-mindedness and intellectual laziness are poisonous to a community whose entire raison d'être is satisfying intellectual curiosity.