Hacker News Reader

Comment by chaosmachine | Hacker News Reader

"It's pretty easy to follow user behavior on Hacker News, they click the first link, read the content go back to Hacker News comment if they found the link interesting"

I think you're wrong here. I'd wager most people check the comments before reading the link (if there are comments).

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I started out by reading the sites directly, but the comments here are so good that I frequently go to the comments first and read them. I also tend to not read stories that have been upvoted but received no comments.

Those are often the most though-provoking ones.

I disagree. Frequently the articles which don't have any comments are the ones that either only apply to a niche field or that don't have any particular stance. The only example currently on the front page is something about pubsubhubbub (something I've never heard of, and thus less likely to click on and read), and going to the article it seems to be rather short and a gripe about it not working.

That is not what I would call "thought-provoking" its a post of limited scope which, while it may be interesting to someone who knows about the topic, does not leave much to be discussed.

It is the discussions that bring me to HN and keep me coming back. I frequently don't even read the articles, because I find the commenters here are of a much closer mind-set to myself, and often know as much or more about the subject than the blogger making the post. A heavily commented article is one I am most likely to read, because it means there is likely something I can add to the conversation.

I click on the comments link, and then the link to the article. That way, if I think the content warrants reading commentary, I just hit back instead of having to search the page again for the link.

There are headlines in which I'm only interested in the comments (usually because I've seen the article or already know a lot about the subject and don't expect to learn anything from the article), but on headlines where I am interested in both, I usually open both the comments and the article in different tabs, and read each while the other is open, but in an order that depends strongly on the day and the content.

If, for example, I find something surprising or incredible in the article, I'll often switch to the comments to see if it was mentioned or debunked, before continuing.

I would of loved to add comments in there, but there is no way of getting them barring html scrapping.

HN Feature Request: RSS feed for comments of an item.

I'd like to add to that: an RSS feed for replies to your own comments.

Indeed. I use the hnsort greasemonkey script to sort by # of comments (and often by # of points), and look first at those new items that seem to have provoked notable discussion.

I then read the comments, and use that to decide if the article itself is worth looking at.

There's a lot to read out there, so some triaging is needed.

I do just the opposite of this: I click links from the bottom up on the front page, and often only look at the comments.

Well I must be a weirdo then, I prefer to at the very least glance at the source before seeing opinions on the source. I do check the comments immediately afterwards because some of them are pure gold! :)

You're not alone. I scan the list of top stories, open new tabs in my browser alternating between source and comments, as many as 10 at a time. I always scan the source first for context but, like others here, generally find that the comments are more interesting.

This is _exactly_ how I browse too! :D

In fact, I wish the link in my google gadget went to the comments page first and not the submitted link.

There have been a few people who have created Yahoo pipes which do just that; this is the only link I can seem to come up with, but should do what you want:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/andrewducker/hackernews

sweet, upvoted.

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