I'm picky about the kinds of articles I read from HN. I admit that I responded in this thread because I figured the title itself insinuated a lot more than it should.

I tend to opt not to read or participate in threads based on that though. General rules are: read the headline and the number of points for each item on the home page and the "new" page; if it's interesting pop it into a tab. If the quality of the article is mediocre or bad then it just gets closed.

Then I don't come back for at least two hours.

Not sure this is a great general strategy, I'd be interested to see what other people do.