That is exactly the plan. To prevent the change from being too disruptive I set all the parameters controlling pending comments very loose.

I know a lot of people are worried that this will break HN socially. I frankly am relieved it didn't break HN literally. The new code touches so many things. I'm amazed it works. But if it does seem to be breaking HN socially, we'll tweak it till it doesn't, and if that's impossible, we'll turn it off. I'm not wedded to having pending comments. I just wanted to try it to see if it can eliminate the very worst comments.