On the chicken&egg problem, imho a front page with the 1st news having 2 comments and all others with just the button "discuss" is a first evidence of missing c

On the chicken&egg problem, imho a front page with the 1st news having 2 comments and all others with just the button "discuss" is a first evidence of missing community. I'd consider hiding that at the very beginning in favor of other signals that actually show the presence of the initial community. At Theneeds.com, where we aim to create a HN-like for "normal" people, i.e. no hackers (and no ventures :), we started with a facepile that generically represents users that interacted with the content, wether they simply upvoted or actually discussed it. I understand that the style here is less graphical, but I think the idea can be elaborated to reduce the "sense of desolation". Well, it's actually Monday night... good luck for tomorrow morning ;)