> On Reddit, if the top comment is a joke, you need to wade through a million other jokes before you get to the next top level comment (which may be interesting)

You can just collapse it.

I agree with you that the categorization on Slashdot was nice, as was the metamoderating. But when I find myself on Slashdot these days, I find it impossible to follow a conversation with so many collapsed comments.

> You can just collapse it.

Yeah, but I've usually swiped down and I don't know if its worth going back up to collapse it.

Default sorting by category would be nice, push the funnies down and pull the interesting ones up.

Some subreddits have custom CSS that extends the collapse element to the height of the container. /r/overwatch is a good example; I wish that style was the default.

There's often not much conversation to follow. I'll very occasionally pop over to Slashdot (I'd been there since before user accounts were a thing), and ... well, it's fallen greatly.

>>> Facebook has solved this with their 'reaction' icons

The Globe and Mail (Canadian national newspaper and growing media company) has executed something similar.

They actually have some pretty innovative work going on (at least with respect to the rest of Canadian media), and maintain a lab for this express purpose.

example (scroll to the end of the article, comments are expandable):

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/recognizing-indigen...

http://globeedge.ca/about/

disclaimer: I work for a national media outfit in Canada that isn't the Globe

That comment section looks terrible. For one thing- the fact you even needed to tell us how to find them? Second, what's innovative there? I can't even collapse threads.

Hm. I wanted to edit, turns out I can't.

I was mistaken, the comment section is provided by: https://www.getcivil.com/

Their innovation labs have more to do with redesigning their end-user services and making them accessible. Anyway I'm not their salesman, I work for a competitor. I just have heard a talk from the head of their lab in the springtime and it was great. They're at least trying things on, whereas media (at least in my experience so far) has been largely resistant.

Trust me, try pitching, or carrying out at a manager's request, a project that changes the working, production, and content delivery paradigms of media and media-design veterans at the pinnacle of their careers; they do not like it.

The fact that the Globe, NYT, and WaPo are active in trying new things is great.

Again if you doubt me, try managing 20+ WordPress multi-sites, each with differing and undocumented theme build processes, and every little component another undocumented patchworked plugin -- all because most of the group doesn't want to have to relearn something they figured was solved enough in 2005.

Innovation like these things in media is well overdue in so many of the processes up to the front end.

Further, the link above is a beta. At least they are trying on different comment systems that aren't Disqus or the 'same old thing'.

Ok got it. Yeah I'm definitely in favor of folks trying new things like Mozilla and WaPo are. We can only be as intelligent as the conversations we hold with each other.

Yeah pretty much. My personal take is there probably needs to be a larger paradigm shift in society and most people's general outlook, ultimately. I'm not quite sure proper moderation or emojis or comment filtering will help all that much. Let's face it, while on some sides optimism abounds, there has been pervading (and maybe growing with the access to information) a jadedness that is pervasive in how people conduct themselves.

Reddit + RES and "collapse all child posts" is pretty awesome. All threads start off collapsed. You can individually expand them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GeoPolitics has a very nice CSS in which the collapse toggle runs down the side of a thread. You can collapse, and set the level you want to collapse, from within the thread. It's genius, seriously.

The bar appears on mouse-over, running vertically.

See for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/6z27gx/rgeopol...