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Comment by chrismorgan | Hacker News Reader

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chrismorgan

Alas, this time you haven’t read far enough!

The author, on page four of the comments: https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot...

> yak8998 wrote:

>> Haha, bravo Mr. Timmer. If IE search is working right, then apparently I am the first. I think its well over 90%...

>> "bananas"

> That was added after publication, so the first few dozen commenters wouldn't have seen it. Idea credit goes to our editor in chief, Ken Fisher, and it was put in by our managing editor, Eric Bangeman.

From that first comment mentioning bananas onwards, bananas are mentioned very regularly. A quick sample of a few pages suggests somewhere around 40% of the comments mention bananas.

View on HN

I actually skimmed the comments but missed the one from the author among the massive number of others. Therefore, seeing the surge of bananas a few pages in, I thought once discovered, people kept looking for what those "bananas" were about and then discovered the sentence above themselves.

The real explanation is also interesting.

> I thought once discovered, people kept looking for what those "bananas" were about and then discovered the sentence above themselves.

I suspect that's what really happened. Would have been better if they included that note since publication time. The first comment with "Banana" then would have been the real indicator. Most others would have simply noted the keyword from the comments before reading the article, like you said.

But isn't that like 'forcing' the readers to the full length of the article? It's fine if the content is very compelling. I think it has to have something to do with reading online. It's really challenging to get readers glued to the page while traditionally physical books and magz have an easier environment (less distractions).

Once upon a time there was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

This is no longer true is it - everyone wants engagement so they salaciously trail some upcoming new fascinating wonderful surprise until the headline is an outright lie, the body of the article is meaningless and the surprise is a disappointment.

But at least someone made some money.

If you don’t have the patience to digest the article, what give you the authority to write on the topic?

> If you don’t have the patience to digest the article, what give you the authority to write on the topic?

... your common sense, your sense of logic, your spidey sense to detect BS trained since long time ago, your previous experience, or the fact that you are yet a expert in the topic.

Or just your curiosity and desire to participate in the conversation, that is the correct motivation. To take a chance to improve your knowledge about a topic shouldn't be regulated by a pass.

Everybody wants their paper turning into a breaking new / symbol of authority or just cheat in the citations game, but this is not how it happens most of the time. Most of the time it is just published and nothing happens. Nobody will rush to read your hard work. Is just how it is

>your common sense, your sense of logic, your spidy[sic] sense

Consider how accurate the senses of a person that speaks without observing are. Existing is not license to proliferate otherwise there would be no notion of a cancerous cell, these would simply be another part of the organism. Uninformed opinions are the cancer of public discourse. Uncontrolled growth of irresponsible and subjective thought.

I'm guessing from your username that (like me) you're a fan of Nietzsche. Alas those of us who (like Nietzsche) believe opinions should be informed are a dying breed these days.

My boss is very good at skimming through scientific papers. She's so well trained she will get the gust of a paper in a couple of seconds(maybe exaggerated). I guess there is the expertise in the field at play as well...

Read the abstract, intro, and conclusion. Scan the references.

And usually there is the graphical representation of the paper, may it be an important figure or plots that can summarise the findings.

> But isn't that like 'forcing' the readers to the full length of the article?

Yes. Personally I don't see a problem with that if you are trying to achieve a certain level of good response.

Maybe an alternative would be to let the presence of the "magic" word/phrase alter the ordering of the comments displayed to other users, or even "shadow delay" responses without it for fifteen minutes.

That's one awesome PR-trick!

From my own experience: when I comment on something that I haven't read it's usually because I'm more interested in the conversation around the subject than the subject itself. So, in that case, I have usually read the comments, and if half of them just randomly included the word "bananas" in them, I'm pretty sure that the convesation whould change to be: "wtf are ppl saying bananas all the time?"

I did read that, and 40% is still a pretty low bar.

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