I've got to disagree with the recommendation against threading. The problem is that too many sites do it badly. The HN approach, where I can collapse an entire thread easily but see them all by default, is optimal for me.
So not new.
I hate many web boards as they don't thread.
Even here it’s a major drawback on the very big threads, because it’s impossible to see what posts are new or keep current on the big discussions.
As soon as you see Dang posting a link to page two and promising software updates in future, you know you’ve no chance of understanding what’s being said.
None of these things are problems with unthreaded conversations, which easily scale to thousands of comments.
Threading, new-only, relevant context displayed systems without point systems but with personal killfiles encourage discussion and viewing other participants as people.
What HN has makes only a relative handful of high-frequency commentators visible as people; everyone else is marginalized.
What do you mean by "new-only"? And how would you show relevant context with personal killfiles and without a point system? :)
I think the HN model is superior in almost every ways, except when it comes to following new comments, which is painful.
Of course, the phrase "do what Reddit does" is blasphemy here, so I'd suggest finding a plugin or a third party service like hnreplies[0] or just put up with the pain. Or do what most people do, resign yourself to forgetting about a conversation as soon as it drops off of your threads page.
HN is not perfect (breaks above several hundred replies), but it is pretty good.
I did kind of like slashdot's upvote-reason information. I thought it could have evolved better though. There could have been "browse serious answers" or "browse to entertain" to match them. That could be an answer to stack overflow's "death to discussion" kinds of things.