For anyone like me who needs an ELI5, the best comment I found that explains what this story is all about is this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25949669

Hacker News needs a way to mark the best comments when there are 1600 comments to read. Years ago, HN used to publicly show karma score of every comment. They eliminated that (and probably for good reasons), but it was useful to find the best comments. Some other way to find the most incisive comments woud be great.