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I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time reading to fi

by dancek 10y ago

I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time reading to find them. Hence, it's very nice of Dan Luu to list some of his favorites. The top root-level comment for each comment page is obviously easy to see, but good comments deeper in the comment tree are easily lost. Would be great if e.g. the top 5% voted comments on a page were highlighted in some way. Perhaps a workable solution would be to just follow the comments listing of smart people. Guess I'll at least try that.

qb45 10y ago
I swear there was a way to show top voted comments but I can't find it now.
- danieldk 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
- DanBC 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
  - tptacek 10y ago
    The problem with /bestcomments is that it's based on votes, and thus does not in fact track the best comments.
tptacek 10y ago
Dan and Scott recently added a "favorites" feature that you can see if you click the timestamp for a comment. Saving a comment to your favorites publishes it in a list of favorites on your profile. I think they're not especially happy with how this feature is working out. But I also think they're very close to a version of the feature that would work quite well: * The "lists" page on the site should include a list of users that have "favorite" comments (at least until the site has so many users with favorites that the list is too long to make sense) with links to their "favorite" pages. This seems trivially easy, and would help bootstrap the feature. * There should be a master list, linked perhaps on the top of the page (maybe replacing the useless "comments" link) to a list of the most-favorited comments.
- grzm 10y ago
  > maybe replacing the useless "comments" link I've found the comments link useful for finding the newest comment activity. That said, it's been useful only because I've been spending an inordinate amount of time on HN as I get started. There's likely a better way of accomplishing the same thing.
BeetleB 10y ago
>I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time reading to find them. Hence, it's very nice of Dan Luu to list some of his favorites. An idea: A full 24 hours after the submission, the top N comments on a given submission should be displayed. Waiting 24 hours will discourage people who are looking for instant highs, and will reward patient people. Seeing the top comments while the threads are still evolving can be very misleading.
- dancek 10y ago
  Great idea. This would also give a longer lifecycle to submissions. Now most tend to die quite fast, so you don't get answers to comments any more if you're late to the party.

by dancek 10y ago

qb45 10y ago

I swear there was a way to show top voted comments but I can't find it now.

danieldk 10y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
DanBC 10y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
- tptacek 10y ago
  The problem with /bestcomments is that it's based on votes, and thus does not in fact track the best comments.

tptacek 10y ago

Dan and Scott recently added a "favorites" feature that you can see if you click the timestamp for a comment. Saving a comment to your favorites publishes it in a list of favorites on your profile. I think they're not especially happy with how this feature is working out. But I also think they're very close to a version of the feature that would work quite well: * The "lists" page on the site should include a list of users that have "favorite" comments (at least until the site has so many users with favorites that the list is too long to make sense) with links to their "favorite" pages. This seems trivially easy, and would help bootstrap the feature. * There should be a master list, linked perhaps on the top of the page (maybe replacing the useless "comments" link) to a list of the most-favorited comments.

grzm 10y ago
> maybe replacing the useless "comments" link I've found the comments link useful for finding the newest comment activity. That said, it's been useful only because I've been spending an inordinate amount of time on HN as I get started. There's likely a better way of accomplishing the same thing.

BeetleB 10y ago

>I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time reading to find them. Hence, it's very nice of Dan Luu to list some of his favorites. An idea: A full 24 hours after the submission, the top N comments on a given submission should be displayed. Waiting 24 hours will discourage people who are looking for instant highs, and will reward patient people. Seeing the top comments while the threads are still evolving can be very misleading.

dancek 10y ago
Great idea. This would also give a longer lifecycle to submissions. Now most tend to die quite fast, so you don't get answers to comments any more if you're late to the party.