HN is a comment site masquerading as a news site. A large percentage of commenters go directly to the comments without ever reading the article. They just want an excuse to spout their opinions.
I disagree.
Just look at how many comments around the site are personal anecdotes tangentially related to whatever the post is.
As a revealed preference, no, you don't. It's trivially easy to collapse a comment you genuinely don't like, which would mean you wouldn't be posting in its replies more than halfway down.
We can debate if comments are more informative than articles and sometimes they are. Many times they are not, especially if you happen to be a SME.
Sometimes I wonder why I continue to read reddit, the signal/noise raise is very low, but when you get that 1 informative or insightful comments out of a sea of garbage, it keeps you going for awhile.
I know I'm a nobody but it's interesting to read comments some are better than the linked articles.
In any case, though, I did read the article before commenting.