
Ask HN: How can we get people to read submissions before commenting on them? - kerkeslager
Over and over, top rated comments on submissions are by people who clearly didn&#x27;t read the thing they&#x27;re commenting on. The longer the submission, the more uninformed the commentary.<p>To make matters worse, I frequently see people who say they come to HN because of the quality comments. There&#x27;s a Dunning-Kruger effect happening, where people don&#x27;t read the submissions, so they don&#x27;t know that people aren&#x27;t reading the submissions, so people think they&#x27;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.<p>I think we can do better.<p>The commenting guidelines say:<p>&gt; Please don&#x27;t comment on whether someone read an article. &quot;Did you even read the article? It mentions that&quot; can be shortened to &quot;The article mentions that.&quot;<p>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.<p>Are there any other ideas for what could be done about this?
======
collyw
A lot of the time I come for the comments as they are often more interesting
and informative than the article. You get a variety of viewpoints (as opposed
to usually just one viewpoint from the article) and HN users in general seem
fairly knowledgable on most of the subjects posted here. It's a couple of
levels above Reddit.

> 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).

------
gitgud
Sometimes the discussion here is more interesting than the article. If there's
something uninformed, then it's totally fine to politely call them out on it.

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

------
vincentdm
HN could allow the submitter to optionally configure up to 3 multiple choice
questions about the article.

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.

~~~
zapzupnz
It would be unfair to people who only wish to comment on one aspect of it
without the need to have an encyclopædic understanding of the content, to
those with reading difficulties, for poorly-formatted content, for videos
(which present their own accessibility issues) rather than text articles, and
plenty of other scenarios.

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.

------
Normille
I think you're fighting a losing battle there.

I always browse HN by the
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](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. :-)

~~~
Gaelan
> 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

It does prevent you from submitting a URL that's identical to a recent
submission.

~~~
lapcatsoftware
> It does prevent you from submitting a URL that's identical to a recent
> submission.

No, it does not.

------
muzani
I feel like this might be a good thing.

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.

------
miguelmota
I don’t really see the issue on hand as a bad thing because it opens up
discussions and all sorts of viewpoints. I see a lot of comments on articles
that aren’t really connected but it provides interesting anecdotes and
stories. People that are looking for informed comments should simply read the
articles themselves and form their own opinions. Everyone has opinions,
whether informed or uninformed, and it’ll be a hard road trying to put
barriers up but I think that would take away some of the essence of HN.

------
stephenr
The problem is not that people didn't read the submission.

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).

~~~
kerkeslager
> The problem is not that people didn't read the submission.

> 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.

~~~
stephenr
> Right, but if you are commenting on a submission you haven't read, you don't
> know what you're talking about.

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".

~~~
kerkeslager
> 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.

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.

~~~
stephenr
Right - so I still think some kind of user flagging/voting is the solution
there, rather than eg weird click tracking timeouts.

~~~
kerkeslager
Well, I'll agree that weird click tracking timeouts isn't the solution. I
don't think flagging/voting is either, though, at least in its current form.

~~~
stephenr
> in its current form

This is the key issue, IMO.

------
kwhitefoot
> The longer the submission, the more uninformed the commentary.

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.

~~~
krapp
No, we shouldn't encourage laziness, too many people here grasp for low
hanging fruit as it is. This is supposed to be a community of highly
intelligent elites looking for thought-provoking, mature discussion on
intellectually gratifying topics. If someone needs a concept dumbed down and
distilled to the length of a tweet before they can approach it then maybe they
shouldn't be here.

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.

~~~
zapzupnz
> If someone needs a concept dumbed down and distilled to the length of a
> tweet before they can approach it then maybe they shouldn't be here.

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.

------
krapp
Unless people _want_ to go through the effort to read an article, they won't -
and it _is_ more effort to read the article than not, so most people will
simply either read what they want into the title, or pile on to the first
comment that catches their interest.

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.

------
matt_s
Uninformed opinions have likely been more prevalent on the internet since the
first comment box appeared.

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.

~~~
lapcatsoftware
> 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."

------
anotheryou
I'd think for a system to scale you need good comment ranking like reddit has.
Not sure if hn is strictly "top" votes or like reddits "best" which takes in
to account that younger comments have been seen less and comments with few
votes need the benefit of doubt and a boost to get "reviewed".

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)

~~~
ilaksh
I don't think reddit has good comment ranking. I think they default to showing
the most popular comments. Popularity and merit are not the same thing.

~~~
anotheryou
it's not perfect, but better than everything else.

More detail here: [https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-
sortin...](https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-sorting-
system/)

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)

------
latte
Reading the original article takes effort, in part because it may be hosted on
a slow-loading site with a bad UI, have intrusive ads, be long, uninteresting
and / or written in a language that's difficult to read.

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.

------
ilaksh
I think we are pretty close to having AI that can automatically generated
little pop-quizes that verify that people read the article or at least opened
them to look up the answers. Not sure it is 100% there but within a few years
there should be at least an imperfect implementation.

------
venmul
The heading gives them biases, though there is moderation after submission.
But may be if the moderator or AI could give a small abstraction of the
article posted could benefit more on the corresponding thread.

------
peruvian
Despite the intellectual aura HN puts off, most people come here to blow off
steam or waste time. You're not going to get these people to read the article
or formulate complex thoughts. At best they'll type a lot.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Definitely, getting into any kind of dialogue usually devolves into a word-
count contest.

------
jhildings
Having a good headline, as opposed to the clickbaits being popular the last 10
years or so

------
troelsSteegin
It would be interesting to analyze HN comments at scale to see if there are
predictable genres or features of comments that are upvoted. Same for down
voting, but it seems easy to predict downvotes. What pockets of the HN
readership are rewarding what genres of comment? I am sure this is not a fresh
idea...

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.

------
hindsightbias
Since most people select the link before commenting to at least see the page,
take a timestamp between that selection and comment time for that IP. Based on
the length of the article and average reading time, make them wait.

Speed readers can spend more time ruminating, since they are probably thinking
too fast also.

~~~
kerkeslager
The implementation of collecting the length of the article is prohibitively
complex and error-prone.

~~~
hindsightbias
If there’s no way to accurately scrape by article today, sounds like a need
for a startup.

~~~
kerkeslager
I think for most possible clients it would be a solution in search of a
problem. Even for Hacker News, I'm not sure how it would actually work out, so
if I were HN I wouldn't be willing to invest much in it.

------
bjourne
My highest upvoted comment this month was for an article I didn't read because
it was behind a paywall. So yes, I think there is a problem. The karma system
rewards you for being on time more than it rewards you for being correct. It
also seem to reward snark a lot.

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.

------
nitwit005
Blocking links to paywalled articles might help, although I'm sure people will
disagree with that idea (you can detect most paywalls, as they try to play
friendly with Google).

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.

