1. I use tabs as a lightweight to-do system 2. I basically hate any kind of latency so I'll always open links in the background, then switch tabs when it's done loading. I hate latency to the extent where if I find a multi-page news article without a single page view, I'll often close the article rather than have to endure each page loading.
In Firefox, I can access pretty much any website from my history or bookmarks by typing a few letters of its URL or title in the address bar.
Then hit one of the new tabs, and well, GOTO 10. Doesn't take too many loops to open that many tabs. Then the task is to reverse the process, closing tabs as I read them.
Since hacker news is the last of the news tabs I get to, by the time I clicked to open this poll in a new tab I already had over 25 tabs open (and that includes the tabs I never close: a couple of email accounts, calendar, contacts, lastpass, ztype, trello, one or two others).
By the time I was done clicking, I probably had over 60 (on hacker news, I click twice, of course, once for news, once for comments). I'm still only down to about 40 again, and still have a dozen or more HN stories to read....
Two of those threads/groups have become the same thread.
Normally I'll find what I'm looking for, but leave the tab up for awhile and let it simmer. Once a week or so I'll pare down a group to just the tabs that I'll want to refer to later, bookmark what remains and clear everything out.
Works for me.