its interesting to me that this entry hasn't gotten more traction. i understand it isn't the most technical post (although there's an allusion to infinite scroll...) but technical relevance is hardly a criterion for HN.

i really like his point equating reading online to listening in conversation and its clichéd at this point that listening is more valuable than speaking. i find long-form articles/blogs much more informative because, oftentimes, they deal with more sophisticated ideas (complex ideas tend to take longer to explain). that said, i will be the first to admit that i am guilty of reading the first couple paragraphs of something before bailing or making a comment to one of my friends about it. sometimes i read the rest and find my foot in my mouth but a lot of times i don't.

either way, i am disappointed that this piece isn't more prevalent so we can have a meaningful discussion about the quality of discourse on sites like this. maybe time on page isn't an accurate representation, but i think the easter egg methodology could have some legs. there likely isn't a "cheat-proof" system, but at least those who read the whole piece will be able to differentiate comments from those who didn't.

Nice idea(s). I feel sure that it's still gameable / cheatable in practice, though. If you're using javascript to check how long I read an article for, how long until someone writes a copy-and-paste console command which sets the read time to 2 hours or so?

I think that the whole human moderation / karma side of things would probably result in the best level of comments.