Comment by Jasper_
7 months ago
> I'm not taking a position for or against the article; I haven't read it.
If you haven't read it, why are you in a position to suggest whether the title is accurate to the article's contents or not?
7 months ago
> I'm not taking a position for or against the article; I haven't read it.
If you haven't read it, why are you in a position to suggest whether the title is accurate to the article's contents or not?
I didn't read it, I skimmed it. In this context, "read" means "read it enough to form my own view of the story"; "skim" means "read it enough for moderation purposes", such as title editing.
Moderation relies on the fact that those two are not the same. It is impossible to read all the articles; it is possible to skim enough of them to make moderation feasible.
(I did end up reading the OP out of curiosity later. My own view of the story is that I am pretty persuaded by it, but I don't like the personal attack aspect, which shows up as a mob dynamic in the comments here.)
This implies that posting a multi-paragraph comment on an article without bothering to read it, as dang did here, is the standard that HN should aspire to going forward.
I didn't post about the article. I posted about how to moderate the title on HN, which is my job, and which does not require reading every article*, though it does require skimming some of them.
* Moderation would be impossible if it did.