I don't understand. I'm all for collapsible comments exactly because the current situation often puts all the focus on the first comment. Because that one will

I don't understand. I'm all for collapsible comments exactly because the current situation often puts all the focus on the first comment. Because that one will have a disproportionally large tree of discussion hanging off it, usually with one or two tangents that have not a lot to do with the featured article. While the tangents can be interesting, when checking comments I actually really do want to read the top five voted top-level comments, because that gives me an idea what people think about the article. Now I do have an HN-comment collapsing plugin installed (I forget which), and I use it for exactly this purpose. Especially when the singular large top-thread contains more than one large tangent that I don't particularly care about, it's absolutely great. Especially compared to the alternative, which is sort of eye-balling where you are in the thread and tracking with your finger or mouse cursor whether you're back at a level where people stopped talking about that thing (which is not always apparent if it's a short reply). Now if I want to read what people think about what other people think (about what people think ..) about the article, I can always return to the tangent later. I also believe having the feature built-in will be a net positive on quality of discussion. Even if you may prefer HN's tone of discussion over Reddit's, to assume that adopting any feature that Reddit has will result in a decline of discussion quality is pure cargo-culting. HN's tone of discussion comes from the guidelines, stringent self-moderation and constructive hints from a moderator. Not from having messy comment threads and lack of UI affordances just because Reddit has them.