I've been wondering whether people use HN comments to filter which articles they read, or whether it's perhaps the other way around.<p>How do you use the comments and the articles on HN?
I know pg is constantly tweaking the comments algorithms, so perhaps this is why lately I've noticed very few comments with more than 5 or so karma points. Many months/years ago, you'd come to the comments and there's be a couple really great comments at the top. So much so that it I didn't need to read the article.<p>Lately however, I've noticed that the top comments all have one or maybe two karma points. Sometimes I can scroll down and find a comment with 30+ points, but the ones above it are one liners and not really interesting. Overall, the comments have become less interesting.<p>It's like a lot of barking dogs, short quips, lack of insight. The commenters seem like they don't want to add value, but rather, want to get their username on the board or something.
If the title seems to be flame bait or something off topic, I'll check out the comments first (e.g. global warming, economics, africa, etc).<p>If the article mentions a specific tech I use or am interested in, I go right to the article.
I almost always look at the comments first. Enough so that I wish the RSS went to HN not the linked article. If the comments are detailed, I usually click through. Since I open more articles than I am really interested in, I have maybe a 50% click through rate on articles with no comments.<p>One thing I find majorly inconvenient is up voting the articles. I have to be pretty motivated to go back and do that.
HN's aggregator/filtering function is good, but not exceptionally unique - the same articles often appear on sites like Reddit or get referenced on other blogs. But the quality of discussions here usually surpasses other sites. In fact, after reading an article, I often find myself ignoring the comment thread on the originating site, then coming back to HN to read the comments.
I skim the beginning of the article to get a sense of the topic, then read the comments in an attempt to see if reading the article is worth while. If it appears that it is, I read the whole article.
If the article seems boring from the title or I've read it before, I'll just read the comments (and sometimes a comment will make me read the article).
I skim the comments, read the article, then come back to the comments.<p>I may skip the article and comments entirely if most of the comments bag on the article.<p>I always open the comments page first so I can get back to it without having to go back to HN main page, where it might have gotten lost below the fold.
I usually only read comments relating to HN "on-site" content such as "Ask HN". I also tend to up-vote these more than off-site content.<p>This is probably due to the fact that I open all the interesting links in tabs and then move off HN to read them.
I use 'Better HN' chrome extension, so often I just flick between the comments and the content, settling on one of them (usually the comments) when the other is lacking. Also great for adding value to pages you find through means other than HN.
If the title suggests the article is directly relevant to me, I'll open the article, then the comments. If the title merely looks interesting, or there are a lot of comments, I'll take a look at the comments first, and then maybe the article.