It was difficult to decide how to handle comments and whether to have them at all, so we opted to just leave them out for now. I like both of those ideas -- adding in a link to an article's analogous HN thread, and the official submit bot.
Comment threads are infinite, sprawling, and often infuriating. It's nice to have a peaceful place aside from that. Us commenters will find a way to comment anyway.
Very much this, I use Ublock Origin to hide comments on all the news stuff I consume since they are generally just noise that detracts from good content (outside of specific sub-reddits and this place anyway).
that's a great use! I'm gonna do that. I've been blocking headers and footers of webpages because I have a 16:9 screen and need all the vertical space can get. as "web 1.0" as it sounds, I love that I get to decide how webpages appear on my computer.