Ask HN: How can we get people to read submissions before commenting on them?
To make matters worse, I frequently see people who say they come to HN because of the quality comments. There's a Dunning-Kruger effect happening, where people don't read the submissions, so they don't know that people aren't reading the submissions, so people think they're becoming more informed by reading the comments when in fact the comments are just as uninformed as they are. There are exceptions of course, but they are becoming more and more exceptions, when they would ideally be the rule.
I think we can do better.
The commenting guidelines say:
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
While it certainly avoids some conflict, I am beginning to see some benefit to this sort of conflict, if it pushes people to actually read things before they opine, instead of just sharing uninformed opinions.
Are there any other ideas for what could be done about this?
43 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadSpeed readers can spend more time ruminating, since they are probably thinking too fast also.
But if there was a topic on say, the Schachter-Singer Theory of Emotion messing with emotional recognition algorithms (which I wrote a thesis on), a good portion of that article would be literature review on the flaws of existing solutions and why the theory helps. Most people are unfamiliar and may misunderstand the article. I could fully speed read such a topic in less than a minute and see if it brings anything new, and then answer the comments with things that even the author may have left out.
The problem is that people commented without knowing what the fuck they're talking about.
I just replied to a comment on the HAProxy 2.2 release. I haven't read the article yet, what I commented isn't related to changes in 2.2 - I was able to comment in a meaningful way (i.e. it's an opinion but it's an informed opinion) because of previous experience and knowledge of the topic.
As with many problems, better "voting" of comments would likely solve this.
If HN adopted reasoned voting (i.e. not just down votes, which lead to an echo chamber of whatever koolaid is flavour of the week) you could easily have a "Incorrect" or "Hasn't read TFA" downvote 'reason'.
Combine that with better handling of downvoted comments (i.e. don't just fade them to oblivion, due the aforementioned koolaid circle jerk) and I believe people would use the voting system more effectively.
Right now I simply refuse to downvote any comment, because it's just completely broken (and yet "working as intended" according to the PTB).
> The problem is that people commented without knowing what the fuck they're talking about.
Right, but if you are commenting on a submission you haven't read, you don't know what you're talking about.
> I just replied to a comment on the HAProxy 2.2 release. I haven't read the article yet, what I commented isn't related to changes in 2.2 - I was able to comment in a meaningful way (i.e. it's an opinion but it's an informed opinion) because of previous experience and knowledge of the topic.
It sounds like while you didn't read the article, you read the thing you were commenting on, though--this isn't really the thing I'm criticizing.
> If HN adopted reasoned voting (i.e. not just down votes, which lead to an echo chamber of whatever koolaid is flavour of the week) you could easily have a "Incorrect" or "Hasn't read TFA" downvote 'reason'.
Tagging comments with "Didn't RTFA" would at least inform other readers that the opinion they're reading is uninformed.
Not at all. I literally gave you an example. Plenty of articles are about a topic people are sufficiently knowledgeable about to be able to discuss it at length without reading the article in question.
> It sounds like while you didn't read the article, you read the thing you were commenting on, though--this isn't really the thing I'm criticizing.
I'd suggest that at least 40% of comments on HN threads are discussion about the greater topic in general rather than the specific article itself. While this type of discussion can also include people who are commenting while uninformed, that doesn't mean that anyone who hasn't read the linked piece is uninformed about the topic. There are very few topics where there is literally only one singular article about it that is required reading to be considered "knowledgable".
What I mean is: the article is the topic. The comments I'm objecting to, are, for example, pointing out a problem with something said in the article, because they got to that paragraph, and then went to HN and posted their disagreement, without reading the very next paragraph where that objection is addressed. Even if they are very knowledgeable about the topic, this isn't a contribution to the discussion, it's a step back in the discussion--maybe they are an expert and could address the author's response to their objection too, but they don't, because they weren't arsed to read the thing they were responding to.
> While this type of discussion can also include people who are commenting while uninformed, that doesn't mean that anyone who hasn't read the linked piece is uninformed about the topic.
Agreed, but it does mean they are uninformed about the linked piece, which hinders discussion if they're just repeating things said in the piece, objecting to things already addressed in the piece, or whatever. Being an expert on the topic of an article doesn't prevent this.
This is the key issue, IMO.
HN is a lot better than most places. That is certainly true for tech related stuff. Financial stuff seems fairly good here - I assume enough people work in fintech to bring the knowledge level up. Politics is a bit more hit and miss, but there isn't really as much right and wrong.
Spends an hour on Reddit and you will see how bad things can get (mainstream subreddits - Reddit can still be good for niche stuff).
Compared to what?
> Spends an hour on Reddit and you will see how bad things can get
If your argument is "well its better than Reddit" you have no argument.
Or if you prefer analogies: that's like saying "eating broken glass isn't that bad, eat a plate of razor blades and you will see how bad things can get".
Do you have an example of something similar that displays better knowledge than HN on a fairly wide variety of topics? Otherwise you have no argument.
For example, someone recently brought up that the solution model in the article is unfair, but misunderstood it. I quoted the part of the article where the author put in his definition, and the Wikipedia article on how this problem is fixed. It's a quick conversation that solves a common misconception, but someone has to raise their hand and bring up the misconception.
One problem is that a lot of people do read the article, but misunderstand it. The better and more information dense it is, the more people don't get it, even after reading it. So simply asking people to read it first might not solve the problem. HN is a good place to "raise your hand" on difficult reading material.
A user would need to answer all of them correctly before being able to comment. An incorrect answer would add a delay of ~1h before they can comment (without needing to do the quiz again).
Even though it’s fairly easy to cheat or work around, it might be enough to tilt the incentives towards just reading or at least skimming the article.
Imagine trying to comment on a comment without reading the article. The article would be irrelevant but obligatory.
This idea discourages discussion rather than promote it. One can guarantee any submission with such questions would never make it to the front page.
> when in fact the comments are just as uninformed as they are
What's your basis for this?
(As a small practical suggestion towards your goal, don't allow paywalled stuff to be linked, or stuff that involves to much nonsense before being able read it).
I don't believe there is technical solution to this, all feasible solutions are likely social, and have diminishing returns over time. Donwvote poor comments, upvote good comments. Correct misinformed commenters as civilly possible, and know when to disengage from toxic threads and people. The culture has to encourage engagement the way that it does civility, or seriousness.
Well that's hardly news; and it applies to pretty much all text both online and offline. If you really want someone to comment on what you think is the main point of a submission write an executive summary and do an Ask HN instead.
Do the summarizing work once instead of expecting ten thousand people to do it.
It's not to much to ask that people read the articles, or at least be willing to attempt it, and to refrain from commenting unless they actually have something insightful to offer. And I'm including people who refuse to turn JS on or refuse to deal with paywalls in the latter group. Don't complain about paywalls or ads or ad blockers... just move on.
I would be afraid that taking such a view would be (A) gatekeeping, (B) elitism (despite your assertion, this is not supposed to be a community of elites; high-level discussion doesn't require elitism), (C) and dismissiveness about the use and usefulness of summaries — they're a perfectly reasonable tool for conveying the most interesting point of what sometimes are very long, technical documents; videos; and often presented inaccessibly.
Such assertions preclude curiosity which is a crime greater than failing to read an article to someone's arbitrary satisfaction.
I always browse HN by the https://news.ycombinator.com/newest link, so I get the latest articles at the top. Every time there's a story of note afoot, it shows up numerous times in the submissions. I've seen the same news story submitted up to a dozen times in the space of a few hours.
If the HN site isn't capable of flagging up the fact that an article someone is about to submit has already been submitted by several other people; and if people are too lazy [or too desperate to earn upvotes] to bother to check whether a story has already been submitted, before submitting it themselves; then I think expecting them to hold back on commenting til they've read an article is extremely optimistic.
PS: Hope this reply is relevant. I couldn't be bothered reading what you wrote, before responding. :-)
It does prevent you from submitting a URL that's identical to a recent submission.
No, it does not.
That should be able to weed out bad comments that are bad because ppl haven't read the thing. (first child comment will call them out, than people will downvote)
More detail here: https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-sortin...
I love how it's related to the likelihood that the sun will rise again tomorrow (now that we have observed the behavior a few times)
I wish HN had at least snippet previews for submissions (like in Twitter, WhatsApp or Facebook) so that I could look at them without following a link and decide whether to open them or not based on more information than just the title.
People that comment without reading the article or maybe even without clicking into it will likely make comments that just don't make sense. I think in engineering circles the corrector/completionist personality trait is more prevalent.
People that did read the article and spark conversation will get more up arrow clicks. Uninformed comments will float to the bottom most of the time on HN.
Did you even read the question? ;-)
"Over and over, top rated comments on submissions are by people who clearly didn't read the thing they're commenting on."
Readership could choose to reward TLDR summaries of submissions. In general, discussion would then be better informed about the content submission.
Personally, I have found interesting discussion to sometimes be not so much about the content of a submission, but about the topic of the submission. A tedious pattern for content-focused stuff is that "what the author didn't do ..." post; a more engaging one is essentially "yes, and here is related or parallel work..." Elaboration is more interesting than negation for this reader.
Up or down voting is a big signal of relevance for the reader but not the only one. Really what I would like is some agent that can read HN submissions and comments for me, extract topics from submissions and interesting comments and links from discussions, and allow me to browse that digest first. Again, not a fresh idea.
It can also be interesting to see discussions deviate from the exact topic of the article. I enjoy reading personal anecdotes and related information (with sources).
How could you even enforce reading the article before commenting? People could have skimmed it, misinterpreted it, intentionally disagree with it.
Have you seen the comment sections on the rest of the internet? Youtube, Twitter, Reddit.... I think we're relatively informed here
For example, some time ago there was an article about why dynamic linking was worse than static linking along supported with a set of benchmarks. Many people posted highly upvoted, snarky, derisive comments about how the author was wrong and questioned his benchmarks. No one tried to reproduce his benchmark figures (had they tried to they would have found some bugs in them).
I'm confident that if someone were to post an article about why static linking is worse than dynamic linking it would be met with the same kind of snark. So it's not the subject.
You might try to find a way to soften the influence of people who are badly behaved voters, and causing those comments to float to the top. A lot of review sites seem to suffer from the people who give well thought out ratings being drowned out by a majority who only ever give the minimum and maximum rating. That's made some sites give up and only offer thumbs up and thumbs down, but if you can detect those users, you can always try to reduce the influence they have on the final rating.