

Show HN: RTFA, a Chrome extension to hide HN comments until you read the article - lmartel
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-the-effing-article/angdimfeecdnooacbnnppmlbobcnpbln

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martindale
I prefer the inverse. Reading the comments from an educated audience first,
then diving into the article with a more firm understanding of the landscape.

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madsushi
I agree. The order I use: read the comments, read the article, and THEN post a
comment if I have something to add.

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prototrout
Perhaps it should just prevent you from _writing_ a comment before reading the
article.

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geekam
I like to read the article first, get a feel a of what it's about and then
read comments to see further analysis. Reading article first let's me think
about it before I get influenced (negative or positive) by reading the
comments.

I agree, commenting without reading the article and only reading the comments
is a sure-shot way of making a mistake.

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JoshTriplett
Hiding the Reply links might make sense if you can't stop yourself from
commenting before reading, but hiding the comments themselves doesn't make
sense. I find that HN (along with LWN) is one of the few sites with high-value
comments, and I often want to read the first few to get context for the
article.

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Estragon
Yes, I often read the comments, decide that the article is uninteresting on
that basis, and leave it at that.

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haar
I prefer using the comments/discussion themselves as an indicator to whether
I'll find the article a worthwhile read in the first place - how often do
users actually comment/discuss an article without reading it beforehand?
What's the point in that?

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sliverstorm
Yup. Too many times have I slogged through six pages of text only to visit the
comments and find, "This article was complete bullshit, and here's a well-
reasoned argument citing excellent sources explaining why you just wasted your
time reading it".

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daigoba66
Usually the title of an article is a poor indication of the article's content,
structure and tone. By skimming the comments I can usually get some idea of
these attributes and then decide if it's an article that interests me.

Also, the HN comments often load much faster than the page itself (full of
crazy JavaScript, CSS, ads, useless graphics, etc).

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b0rsuk
The people who need it the most won't use it. But you are onto something.

The next step: Get in touch with Google so that it's included into official
Chrome in some way. It doesn't have to be installed by default - just a one
time pop-up when a user first visits Hacker News. An offer to install it.

The next step +1: Encourage people to expand the extension to other sites.
Write it in a modular way, write documentation.

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bbarn
One thing though, if the site's unreachable, often in the comments there's a
mirror or a summary. If you can't turn the a into a:visited, you'd never get
the link to show up if the site gets overloaded by the HN effect.

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Aldo_MX
I don't have a preference about which one to read first, for ex. with articles
like "I stopped using X and why you should stop too", I find more value in
reading the comments first, because usually the top comment will be a counter-
argument more worthy than the original article.

But with articles that teaches something new to me, for ex. "Scaling X to a
million users", I prefer to read the article first.

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markbao
This is almost ironic, since the people who install this are the ones who are
conscientious enough to need it the least.

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kyberias
I very much prefer to first read the comments because it gives me quality data
to determine whether the article is worth a read or not.

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bigbij
I'm looking for a tool to sort and show comments according to time. Specially
for Ask HN and Show HN.

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billforsternz
I would prefer an extension that stopped me reading the article until I had
read the comments.

