Over and over, top rated comments on submissions are by people who clearly didn't read the thing they're commenting on. The longer the submission, the more uninformed the commentary.
To make matters worse, I frequently see people who say they come to HN because of the quality comments. There's a Dunning-Kruger effect happening, where people don't read the submissions, so they don't know that people aren't reading the submissions, so people think they're becoming more informed by reading the comments when in fact the comments are just as uninformed as they are. There are exceptions of course, but they are becoming more and more exceptions, when they would ideally be the rule.
I think we can do better.
The commenting guidelines say:
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
While it certainly avoids some conflict, I am beginning to see some benefit to this sort of conflict, if it pushes people to actually read things before they opine, instead of just sharing uninformed opinions.
Are there any other ideas for what could be done about this?
> when in fact the comments are just as uninformed as they are
What's your basis for this?
(As a small practical suggestion towards your goal, don't allow paywalled stuff to be linked, or stuff that involves to much nonsense before being able read it).