Downvoting doesn't solve this kind of problem though. The irrelevant subthread still takes up most of the real estate of the page. The problem comes in when th

Downvoting doesn't solve this kind of problem though. The irrelevant subthread still takes up most of the real estate of the page. The problem comes in when the subthread is attached to a highly rated parent thread. It doesn't help that so many people feel compelled to jump into the irrelevant subthread as they're usually emotional topics. Perhaps if the community as a whole downvoted every response in the subthread such behavior would stop. As it is, only the half that the majority disagrees with is punished, but the entire subthread is a problem, whether you agree with the individual posts or not. More than once I've given up on a comments section under a post from "irrelevant subthread fatigue".