This thread is a great case-in-point for me. I read comments to here (this is the top thread at this moment), and now am moving on. I won't bother to read the OP at all.

Oh, I wouldn't make that mistake. The OP is lots of fun, even if you aren't someone who would use it as their primary HN interface.

I agree... The times when the comments are a good indicator of when to skip something is when the article is pages of text, or a very long video.

This one's interesting to take a glance at, then move on.

OK- done. It was kind of a cool.

I find that actually looking at the article provides a far better indicator of quality, but to each his own.

In general, determining the quality of an article with any accuracy by looking at it is well more time-intensive than just looking at the comments.

Yep. Especially when the content is the longer kind.

But what's most important is not % error rate, but % error rate / s.

what if the comments are a waste of time too?

Thats very rarely the case on HN, either because of the HN culture as it is now, or the mods removing very subpar content.