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Aye, that was my comment. :) I hope HN will come up with a nice solution to allow these kinds of comments but have them be less distracting.

• krapp 12y ago
  Arguably, a threaded forum by design encourages tangential discussions which deviate from the topic the deeper you go. The problem in HN's case is all the threads are open and entirely visible - which is one of the cases where its minimalist layout works against readability. I think the best solution would be thread folding (which I know is being worked on anyway) where the default is that all threads are collapsed. Then, off topic discussion wouldn't take up any more than a single post's worth of space by default. Having it be a conscious choice to move deeper into a thread also ensures that no one has to scroll past much content they don't care about.
  • aw3c2 12y ago
    That would be incredibly annoying on touch interfaces and generally not allow quick scanning of comments anymore. It would take a lot more time.
    • krapp 12y ago
      I suppose open threads by default would be more friendly, or maybe defaulting to open for mobile layouts. But it taking more time would kind of be the point - opting in to participate rather than opting out by scrolling past content means fewer sarcastic comments about how a thread is off topic and irrelevant.