It’s possible that the current system is fine as it is, and that Dan is simply explaining how it is. Suppressing comments is an interesting idea, but there are

It’s possible that the current system is fine as it is, and that Dan is simply explaining how it is. Suppressing comments is an interesting idea, but there are all kinds of second order effects — if it’s a disaster story, people need to communicate. If it’s not, the ranking algorithm would need to be adjusted, since the suppressed comments have an unfair time penalty. And so on.