HN Explorer

Article, Comments. What do you read first?

5 points by Hexstream ↗ HN
I sometimes find myself pondering if I should read a submission's article or comments first. The tradeoffs, as I see them, are:

Read article first, pro: when comments refer to the article I know what they're talking about. Read article first, con: If the comments point out it's a worthless/biased/shitty article, I may just have wasted my time reading it. Read comments first, pro: I might save reading a shitty article. Read comments first, con: The comments might skew my view of the article, I might have less independence.

What's your opinion on the matter?

5 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 29.4 ms ] thread
edw519
I read the article first. I takes less than 30 seconds to determine if it's worth continuing.
noodle
i typically read the first high karma comment or two before reading the article if there are tons of comments, just to get a feel for whats going on.

otherwise, article first.

astrec
I usually scan the article first, and only if piques my interest read it properly. I probably read the comments about 20% of the time - typically if I have some kind of emotional response. If I'm completely honest, I'm more likely to read the comments on a piece that attacks or supports my own view of the world, and bypass the guff in the middle. Is that normal?
bayareaguy
If the source is on my mental blacklist, I'll ignore the article and only skim the comments.

Otherwise if the article has many comments, I'll read it first. If the article has few comments I read the comments first.

I find this helps me skip garbage and duplicates. It also helps when someone posts a better link to the article (e.g. text instead of video or mp3).

If nothing recent or popular seems interesting, I'll look for recent comments or submissions by people listed on /leaders