zlacker

Comments are a really interesting part of news.ycombinator for many, but it is still difficult to find the most interesting threads. The top-level comments page has degraded given that the traffic has grown considerably, so the result is many 1-upvote comments.

I am proposing to change the comments page linked at the top-level menu to a ranking scheme similar to the one that ranks threads in a submission's comments page, but favouring recently posted 1-vote comments less.

Comments are more interesting than submissions in many cases. Such a page would support bottom-up (comment to submission) navigation on the site better. I know there are some features for bottom-up navigation like the on: feature on the comments page, but isn't very useful unless the comments are good. This would allow me to explore articles I would have never found to be interesting looking at the main page but when framed in the right context with an excellent comment would be very interesting.

The usage statistics of the top-level threads and comments links could support or reject a rethinking of the functionality that those pages provide.