Comment by rosmax_1337
3 years ago
Comments have a ""social"" value rather than a ""intellectual"" value. You get a feel for what other opinions about a topic might be, and a grasp for how people argue about it. Don't come looking for oranges in the apple aisle of the grocery store.
It's both actually. I read the comments on various sites for both reasons, but why I read the comments on a particular site has everything to do the community.
I read the comments here for the social value, but as well, because this site attracts a lot of experts in the fields where articles are being posted from. The same is true of a few other sites I read. A story posted about flight recorders a while back on another site, saw a few people in the threads pop up, "I have been a professional pilot for 30+ years now", and then someone else weighed in, "I design flight recorders, and am familiar with the internals of the one mentioned in the article", and they had a great debate! The readers of the comment thread learned something they could not have from the article.
I read the comments on partisan political news sites because it's a quick way to get a read on what the views are on that side of the spectrum, particularly when it comes to mainstream vs. fringe.