zlacker

>>lordna+(OP)
I think it's all our own fault if we ever expected expert political philosophy or scientific debate from a group of people who mostly just, at the end of the day, program websites and phone apps.

A high percentage of IT, software engineering, and professional advice on HN is very valuable, but the percentage of other kinds of commentary that's valuable is much lower. I occasionally also get sucked into the sorts of debates that I just shat on, but most of the time I find myself having to scroll past huge chunks of comment sections because half the sub-threads are pedantic political debates over some term or whatever, nested 10+ levels deep.

>>meowfa+qC
To save you some scrolling: if you click the little [-] the thread will collapse. I've campaigned to make the default an all-collapsed page but it did not get much support.

>>jacque+3E
Arguably, by putting the comments on a separate page they already are collapsed by default. Going to the comments page signifies that one wants to view the comments. Why do you think a further level of collapsing would be beneficial? Would you expand things once they are upvoted, or always require an additional click to view the deeper levels?

>>nkurz+0H
I wouldn’t mind seeing sub threads collapsed by default. (Of course I could always do that myself.) It would make for a cleaner page. I could scan the top level comments for interest subtopics/responses, and it would discourage thread-jacking.