I see HN in the same way. It happens so often that HN discussion is much better that article itself that I go there first, and RTFA only if the discussion makes me want to read it.

For this article, I tried to read it after reading a few comments, but got bored.

The readability of lot of web articles tend to be quite poor as they are written from viewpoint of SEO rather than readability. I rarely can read complete web article unless it was published in a paper magazine or newspaper.

HN used to be good. Recently, I have seen groupthink taking hold, hostility toward dissension, and opinions are not that knowledgable and educated on controversial topics. The HN quality of discussion is not that different from themed serious subreddits.

Give Reddit a chance, find subreddits in your area of interest.

I would have given Reddit a chance if they were not constantly screwing around with the UI. The new UI is sluggish and really affects the reading experience negatively.

I love that HN has not made any changes to its UI for a long time and a fast and convenient reading experience remains top priority on HN. If there are more HN-like forums, that would be something I would be interested in.

It's frustrating, but utilizing old.reddit.com / Reddit Enhancement Suite (https://redditenhancementsuite.com/) goes a long way in making it a more enjoyable experience.

Heh, I remember maybe a decade ago, some e-magazine in spanish which marketed itself as a truly cultural experience, with long articles on interesting cultural topics. It was so badly formatted for SEO that it was so painful to read which probably made people think that the cultural themes were more difficult than they actually were.

Correction: _commenters_ think of Reddit titles as discussion prompts. I think that's a pretty important distinction to make. It's possible that there is a sizable group of people who actually do click the links, but they don't also go back to comment.

I recall that as standard practice on Slashdot in 2000.

At least there you could yell RTFA. This is forbidden here.

Yes, but getting a spate of RTFA was a badge of honour. Also responding RTFA meant that you didn't get it either. To a flood of RTFA you got to be allowed to be quite pithy in response with outrageous indignation and generally still be onside.

My /. id (JSG) is ~18K but is only so large because I lurked for a few years before signing up. sigh

Even back then I have always used identifiable IDs on forums, those are my initials and here I use surname + initial and do so on everything internets these days.

Am I mad?