Stolen discussions

7 points·diminish··3 comments

In many HN submissions, the top voted comments are remotely related to the primary or secondary topics discussed in the story - and I feel like a nice discussion opportunity is stolen for an irrelevant or niche or superficial or competitor discussion. This situation disturbs me most of the time, but I'm also trying to find counter-arguments. What do you think?

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I have an idea for a horizontal forum to solve this very problem. Soomeday I will work a little more on it. But the idea is that you have horizontal rows formed by every new comment direct to the post. And the subsequent comments of the thread are in this row.

This way it is easier to skip to the next comment thread. One thing you lose is the indentation that allows subthread on each thread, but I don't think it is a relevant loss.

And the ordening of the rows a mix of chronology and upvotes.

I think it's a good emergent quality of varied points of view, that we don't always like or are interested in every post, or even appreciate the flow the post's comments are flowing.

I don't discount your observation and critique. But I would love to see a chart of primary, secondary, and tertiary points by upvotes and position in thread. Maybe even indexed by subject matter (social, programming, world news, etc...)

Good comments extend the content. Good magazine advertising does the same thing.

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