I'm sure I'm not alone in that I read HN comments before I hit an article, often because so many articles are linkbait, misleading, lacking content, overly saturated in ads, etc. I very, very rarely click through to TechCrunch articles, for example, as they're rarely satisfying.
If the comments suggest the article is especially worth reading, then I'll click on. If they don't say much about the article itself or suggest that it's not worth the click, I feel as though I haven't rewarded average behaviour with that page view.
In this case, I checked the HN comments for a direct link to the image because that's honestly all I wanted to see - the design and wording of the billboard. I didn't want the article, comments, masthead, everything else that comes with a news site pageload these days. I use AdBlock so the ads weren't going to reward the site owner and I'd just be chewing up extra bandwidth. When I didn't see a link to the image, I wondered if anyone else might've been looking for one too and thought I'd put one up. Easy to click for those who wanted it, easy to ignore for everyone else.
I assume the couple of downvotes are people thinking along your lines, or being against deep-linking?
If the comments suggest the article is especially worth reading, then I'll click on. If they don't say much about the article itself or suggest that it's not worth the click, I feel as though I haven't rewarded average behaviour with that page view.
In this case, I checked the HN comments for a direct link to the image because that's honestly all I wanted to see - the design and wording of the billboard. I didn't want the article, comments, masthead, everything else that comes with a news site pageload these days. I use AdBlock so the ads weren't going to reward the site owner and I'd just be chewing up extra bandwidth. When I didn't see a link to the image, I wondered if anyone else might've been looking for one too and thought I'd put one up. Easy to click for those who wanted it, easy to ignore for everyone else.
I assume the couple of downvotes are people thinking along your lines, or being against deep-linking?