Ocean temperatures have been the subject of a half dozen HN articles (driven by articles in the news) in the past few weeks, so I assume that’s the reason.

Speaking for myself, not Dan, but for non-technical topics that appear on HN, the discussion would be a lot better if the average commentator read the obvious Wikipedia article before commenting. That’s true even though Wikipedia has a lot of problems.

" but for non-technical topics that appear on HN, the discussion would be a lot better if the average commentator read the obvious Wikipedia article before commenting. That’s true even though Wikipedia has a lot of problems"

I have vague ideas of a forum, where any new poster has to answer some basic questions about the topic first correctly.

Most online discussions would probably benefit from that.

ControlProblem subreddit implements this and I was quite impressed.

That's a great!!! idea. I get very frustrated reading HN comments that have obviously never read the article beyond the title.

I've submitted them before and often enjoy when they're posted. Sometimes the zeitgeist-link is obvious or sometimes it's a bit random. I'd guess that people who enjoy when they're posted also take to submitting interesting pages they've read (or re-encountered).

You may enjoy this little list I built, which collects all Wikipedia articles posted on HN and rank and tag them.

https://www.mostdiscussed.com/

They maybe stumbled upon it and found it interesting. There's often no need for context, it can simply be an interesting article to read.

For the exact same reason people post links to other things, it's interesting. It's always been more "hacker" than "news" here.

Incidentally, check out this wacky alien-looking worm that exhibits bioluminescence even though it lives its entire life inside of a tube, so there is no one to perceive it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaetopterus

Oh shit - cool worm!!

HN is not Reddit. We like comments that add information and dislike comments that only express brief reactions, jokes, etc. Keeps the signal to noise ratio high.

Thanks!

That was neat, though it does mention there are some other creatures that can choose to share the tube and the research about it may be lacking in smaller companion life (bacteria or other lifeforms).

Is this worm all over the world or there's a certain climate it can live on. Wikipedia doesn't expand on it.

It’s a delightful HN quirk. You can post a direct link to anything you find interesting, apropos of nothing.

Ocean temperatures have been in the news (for me), so I for one can see the context.

Because it is compliant with HN rules.

If you see it in the front page and it bothers you enough to ask the question maybe you should try to find another community.