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Comment by nuclearnice3 | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Your phrasing is a little different than I would use, but I think you've captured the gist. I'm not seeking out articles I haven't read to comment on, but rather I'm here for the great aspects of our community found in the comments.

I think this thread -- where a portion of the debate is about details of the headline answered by the first sentence of the article -- hints that many people are using a similar modus operandi.

My mental model is

  - comments are more entertaining
  - comments are shorter
  - comments highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the article
  - comments expand the scope of the article and point at interesting related items

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I understand just reading the comments for all the reasons you mentioned, but how can you contribute to the discussion when you never took the time to understand what the discussion was about?

It’s like debating the validity of what the 10th person said in a game of telephone instead of going to the first person to understand what the origin of the idea is.

As the sibling said, that seems like a problem.

But the discussion is almost never about the article. Look around! Consider that this one isn't.

I reviewed the sibling's comment history.

  - Well that's a problem
  - If stimulus is people spending their money in the marketplace to meet their needs, I'd say it works quite well.  
  - Holding on to the best explanation until they find a better one, you mean? Yes, of course they are
  - The writer was belittling the OP so maybe direct that elsewhere
  - Nostalgia?
  - What is "woke" political stuff, specifically, vs non-woke?
  - I want to see x rays!
  - Linkding is great, and has some browser extensions to inject your favourites into relevant search pages on the likes of google, ddg, bing, etc, which was a nice idea I hadn't considered before
  - Have you tried kbin?
  - It's both hilarious and unintuitive, but for some people their personal familiarity trumps most other things

None of those are about the article! Great, engaging comments. Nice pointers to interesting tools -- Linkding, kbin. Some economics, some psychology, some tech. Not a single reference to the article, none on the same topic as the article.

Good points. Especially about our discussion here. I guess I would narrow it and say as long as it’s not a commentary on the article itself then no worries! If someone is commenting on the article without reading then I still feel like I would rather them read it first so we can have the same definitions.

> If someone is commenting on the article without reading

Yeah, I hear you. I note in my case, I read the article and posted about the clarifying sentence.

I did find it funny that so many people were in an animated discussion about the interpretation of the headline.

  gremlinsinc: "how does it know there isn't one further out past the observable universe?"
  doctoboggan: "the title is a little unclear, but I read it as the most distant known supermassive black hole"
  dotnet00: "I feel like contextually it's pretty obvious "

Obviously without reading the first sentence of the article.

Well that's a problem

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