Ask HN: How to improve signal-to-noise ratio in comments?
That being said, I find it frustrating that every topic has the first 2-3 comments be something completely tangential to the point of the submission.
For instance, say there's a submission for "company A buys company B". The often upvoted comments will be about how A will destroy B, B will destroy A or how they both are terrible companies based on anecdotes and lots of personal opinions.
You will often find that the 4th or 5th comment will have a sensible commentary on what that means for the market, the synergies, challenges, etc.
IMHO, the latter should be the upvoted comments because you'll learn something and there's a sensible discussion by knowledgeable people.
One solution is to put the burden on moderation to kind of super upvote those comments. But that doesn't scale. Should HN have "super upvoters" (people whose upvotes add more than just 1 point to the comment)?