Comment on Last Year on My Mac: Look back in disbelief – The Eclectic Light Company
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 21 hours agoI read the comments to find out if it is worth reading. Also much of the time, the comments are more interesting than the article, so I just have a discussion in the comments with the headline and other comments as the jumping off point.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I get where you’re going here and I do the same as far as reading, but before I post I make it a point to actually read the article. Otherwise I may be forming and asking questions clearly already addressed or are completely divorced from the actual topic because I lack the articles context.
I feel it is part of the mutual respect with other posters to not waste their time asking questions already answered (in the article) or derailing the conversation because I don’t know what conversation I’m in.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. Often times if I see an interesting question in the comments, I am glad for it, because that was the insight I needed to want to read the article and answer it.
I get what you’re saying about going over ground already answered in the article. For me that isn’t annoying unless the commenter is getting something wrong that is talked about in the article, and doubles down on it.
But plenty of interesting conversations can happen in the comments (like this one) that have almost nothing whatever to do with the article! I feel like each post is an invitation to discuss the general topic, but I don’t consider reading the article to be an absolute prerequisite. If you feel like that is disrespectful, I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it is that disrespectful.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Just reading comments without the article? I have no issue with that at all, and do that myself.
How do you, as the commenter yourself, know you aren’t getting something wrong without reading the article?
How do you know what the general topic is without reading the article?
Maybe disrespectful is too strong a term. Let me amend that; I lose respect for the poster when they’re asking a question that is answered in the article. I sometimes write off engaging with them further in that thread because they’re clearly not even doing the most basic of tasks to be a part of the conversation.
I’ll do this too on occasionally, if I can clearly tell we’re not discussion the article topic, but its a gamble on my part and if someone smacks me down because it is article topical, I fully own that and apologize knowing its my fault.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 12 hours ago
I try not to comment on what I don’t know about, so I might write a general comment about the wider topic (known from the headline and picture) or respond to someone else about a peripheral point, or make a joke based on word associations.
Once in a while I might get something wrong but hopefully not more often than normal.
Sometimes I’ll comment first, and then read the article later if the article’s contents become germaine to the discussion.
That’s totally fair to ignore low effort comments! And I do get how they can be annoying. For me I try to make my corner of the internet a little more fun, but I definitely scroll and comment for the dopamine and don’t read every article. But I do try to contribute to the discussion in a positive way.
I think I’ll remember this conversation when I’m commenting in the future. ;)
Have a happy new year!