I agree comments are a great idea. But I don't think all comments are necessarily negative. I can think of times where I wanted to comment directly to the poste

I agree comments are a great idea. But I don't think all comments are necessarily negative. I can think of times where I wanted to comment directly to the poster privately. So maybe there is an even more generalized solution for providing feedback/responses. Flags are a good idea too. The HN feature set is still minimal and polished compared to other similar sites. So the community is really sensitive to any changes. From seeing previous feature experiments I think the only way to really see if it works is to implement it and get feedback. I remember some previous features that seemed like they would be great(!) when they were written up and first implemented. Then after a few hours or days were frustrating. Like the orange vs greys karma change.