Ask HN: Do you think it'd be a good idea to fold comment threads?

Folding threads similarly to how they are done on Slashdot.org would indeed be a good idea.

And better than having paginated comments, as noted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2132568

I agree, folding comments does improve the readability of the thread. This Chrome extension does exactly that:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dibillbafbngeilo...

On my laptop, I just scroll through quickly and it isn't a problem. Where this would be useful is on my iPod touch - which often doesn't re-render the contents of the screen when scrolling quickly.

I do usually skim over the outter-most comments in busy threads. I don't really mind, as it is, though.