I made a Chrome extension some time ago that does comment collapsing + hide stories:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-hideit/dibillba...

But there are many other solutions around, including bookmarklets, etc. to do it.

I use http://hckrnews.com/ as my front-page interface, which also has a browser extension that does this (as well as highlight new comments since you last read the page).

I couldn't find the source (website appears to be down) but here is a bookmarklet that gives you an ability to collapse comments http://pastebin.com/382fvsqt

I had a similar impression today: that you either need to be among the first to post a comment, or must comment in reply to an already highly placed comment, lest your comment be relegated to scroll-bar irrelevance.

I agree. Comment thread collapsing would provide the most bang for its buck. It'd help facilitate more threads of discussion immensely.

My extension, Hacker News Enhancement Suite [0] does this along with other things. Unlike other extensions, I chose to place the collapse icon before the username so it's in a predictable place.

The extension also changes the entire style of HN so some people may not like that. I am working on creating an option to use the classic style.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...

God, yes. I often hesitate to even look at the comments because the 1st comment is inevitably some hyper-snarky rebuttal with a thousand sub-comments.

Please add this.

Hide is a bit messy. I would prefer a link on each comment which scrolled the page to the next comment in that comment level.

Agreed! A comment with many replies is essentially a new "sub-post" with a life of its own.

Probably best feature request

That is something I have wanted for a while too.

YES PLEASE