The real explanation is also interesting.
I suspect that's what really happened. Would have been better if they included that note since publication time. The first comment with "Banana" then would have been the real indicator. Most others would have simply noted the keyword from the comments before reading the article, like you said.
... your common sense, your sense of logic, your spidey sense to detect BS trained since long time ago, your previous experience, or the fact that you are yet a expert in the topic.
Or just your curiosity and desire to participate in the conversation, that is the correct motivation. To take a chance to improve your knowledge about a topic shouldn't be regulated by a pass.
Everybody wants their paper turning into a breaking new / symbol of authority or just cheat in the citations game, but this is not how it happens most of the time. Most of the time it is just published and nothing happens. Nobody will rush to read your hard work. Is just how it is
Consider how accurate the senses of a person that speaks without observing are. Existing is not license to proliferate otherwise there would be no notion of a cancerous cell, these would simply be another part of the organism. Uninformed opinions are the cancer of public discourse. Uncontrolled growth of irresponsible and subjective thought.
But at least someone made some money.
Yes. Personally I don't see a problem with that if you are trying to achieve a certain level of good response.
Maybe an alternative would be to let the presence of the "magic" word/phrase alter the ordering of the comments displayed to other users, or even "shadow delay" responses without it for fifteen minutes.
From my own experience: when I comment on something that I haven't read it's usually because I'm more interested in the conversation around the subject than the subject itself. So, in that case, I have usually read the comments, and if half of them just randomly included the word "bananas" in them, I'm pretty sure that the convesation whould change to be: "wtf are ppl saying bananas all the time?"
The author, on page four of the comments: https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot...
> yak8998 wrote:
>> Haha, bravo Mr. Timmer. If IE search is working right, then apparently I am the first. I think its well over 90%...
>> "bananas"
> That was added after publication, so the first few dozen commenters wouldn't have seen it. Idea credit goes to our editor in chief, Ken Fisher, and it was put in by our managing editor, Eric Bangeman.
From that first comment mentioning bananas onwards, bananas are mentioned very regularly. A quick sample of a few pages suggests somewhere around 40% of the comments mention bananas.