Comments definitely count. Everything is an item (note how comments and posts both have links that are /item?id=###), just some items happen to be replying to o

Comments definitely count. Everything is an item (note how comments and posts both have links that are /item?id=###), just some items happen to be replying to other items. That's actually one thing I really admired when I first saw HN from a programming point-of-view. "Of course! Why should comments be any different than posts? Posts are just comments that don't reply to anything!" The best part of that is that when you do that, nested comments Just Happen, because comments are commentable just like posts because they're all items.