Here are some of the reasons I more often read comments before articles now:
1. The site doesn't render at all (I get a blank page) on my main browser because cookies are disabled on it. Reading the article requires copying the URL and switching over to another browser to load it there.
2. The site renders, but despite using uBlock, it's still laden with "Sign up for our mailing list", "accept cookies" (on my cookies-disabled browser), "Buy a subscription!", or, "you can't read any more articles from this site" popups. In the latter case, there's maybe one paragraph of content available.
3. The articles themselves are trash about half the time and on HN specifically it's not unusual to find comments that offer a little more depth on whatever the subject is.
4. Skimming the comments first is a low-effort-high-return signal for whether the article is worth clicking on anyway.
5. I don't care that much about the subject anyway, and all I really want is a two-minute update on the topic before I drag myself back to whatever I'm procrastinating on.
In truth, there's been a concerted effort from a lot of different sites over the last year-plus to discourage me from reading their content directly.
My simpler response to the same question: the signal:noise ratio of the comments is vastly superior to all but the very best and rarest articles. 95% of the value I derive from HN is from the comments.
> ... the signal:noise ratio of the comments is vastly superior to all but the very best and rarest articles.
<rant>
Not for those of us who RTFA and then come to the comments, only to have to sift through numerous comments asking questions or discussing things that were clearly answered in TFA.
That simply leads to the situation where those who don't bother to RTFA end up wasting the time of everyone who does, lowering the S/N ratio for us, eventually causing some of us to then stop reading the articles and skipping straight to the comments, and the cycle repeats over and over. Eventually, we'll get to the point where nobody reads the articles -- and the entire purpose of the comments is (or, at least, was) to discuss what was in the article!
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Sorry, it's a huge pet peeve and, to me, it's no different than someone asking a large group of people (here, on a mailing list or group chat, etc.) a "simple question" that, with a minute or two's worth of effort they could have easily found the answer to themselves. Sure, they might have saved a minute or two of their time but, when you think about it, what they really did is wasted a minute or two of "n" other's people time.
Or, to put it another way, it shows a complete lack of respect for other people and their time (and basic courtesy in general). I can be fairly impatient, though, so perhaps it's just me.
Anyways, it's 0333 so I should probably just log off HN and go to bed! I'll blame my little rant on exhaustion and lack of sleep. :-)
I hear you. Nobody wants to see ignorant questions or comments based on wrong (tho easily-verifiable) assumptions about article contents. But IME, HN moderation does a pretty good job of suppressing that kind of selfish nonsense.
