If you re-read the comment with the assumption that they were not trying to (mis)represent the author, it still makes sense, so I don't think that was the intention.
That was not my intention. I was operating under the assumption that anybody in the comment section had read the article first, since then it would have been known that I wasn't quoting the author, I was quoting something the author quoted.
Reading the comments to decide if you want to read the article is also a valid workflow. Although anyone doing that (me included) isn't entitled to complain about quotes not having enough context.
I always look at the HN comments first to see if the article is worth reading, and probably other people do as well. HN loads quickly, doesn't have a paywall/cookie pop-up so it's just a better experience to look here first, and often the comments here are better value anyway.
It's easy to write something with an assumed context that is easily misinterpreted by readers without that context. I think it's unreasonable to interpret that as 'misrepresenting' something unless you can show that the writer knew their audience wouldn't have that context.
The lack of context reltated to what the author wrote is a sin of omission -- because anyone reading a top-level comment that begins with a quote (like this) is, to a first approximation, going to imagine the commenter is responding to the position of the author.
I think that’s a good reason to read the linked article before drawing conclusions about its contents from discussion threads. Having read the article first, I understood immediately that the comment was not misrepresenting anything from the article, and that their commentary bolsters the point made there.
And you don’t necessarily have to read the article before comments. I often don’t! But when I encounter something in comments which seems incongruous with what I’d expect or hope to find in the article, that’s a good prompt to go ahead and read it to gain context.
