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I agree, but I think this format could work well in certain situations where it can be done automatically, like for comments with karma. You could vary the threshold for hidden comments, so mobile users see less but overall higher quality comments (with a link to show hidden ones), and desktop users see all by default.

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Are you talking about (a) completely hiding low-karma posts, or (b) "minimizing" the text of those low-karma posts in a way similar to how the example works?

If it's (a), that's basically what sites like Slashdot and Reddit already do for desktop users.

If it's (b), the obvious question is how you algorithmically filter text to only include the pertinent information (the given example is almost certainly hard-coded), which doesn't sound like a simple question to answer.

Maybe you could put unpopular posts in shades of grey? Or smaller fonts?

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