Ask HN: Should HN require you to click on the story link before commenting?

Then people will create a javascript tool that auto-clicks any URL on news.ycombinator.com that it hasn't yet seen in order to enable comments. Or they'll just tab-open other the links.

Right, it's not tamper-proof. It's not really intended to be. As long as it forces them to make a habit of clicking the link then we can get more of those people to read the article.

or ctrl-click then comment on most browsers

What's the point? To increase comment quality? People clicking on the link would most likely not do anything to improve quality. If you look at the comments underneath most news articles, you'll see that.

Saving all this clicks and checking who clicked in what will require resources and will have a small return.

Sometimes people will admit they didn't click the link or read the article but have something meaningful and valuable to add in response to a specific comment. I don't see any reason to discourage such contributions by increasing the burden to participate. It's easy enough to downvote people doing the knee-jerk thing and making themselves look like jerks. So I think there is already a mechanism in place for addressing this issue. In most cases, upping the ante with increasing attempts to control people (which is basically what this suggestion amounts to) are a net social negative.