Personally, I find myself skipping past most of the video comments. I think, just like one might see on a site like ValleyWag, the content (or in this case, a video comment) that gets the most clicks will often include a pretty girl.

You can't "scan" the content of video comments like you can, say, this comment. It's an interesting idea, but seems to disrupt the flow of communication.

Case in point, I just watched a 20 second clip of Arrington saying, "Um.. Uhh.." and not much more. His text comments are obviously a tad more engaging.

These seem much more suited to a video site, like YouTube, than a comment thread. Please, Hacker News, don't adopt video comments!

Video comments seem kind of lame. They take more time to view than just reading the text.

Doing video polls sounds more interesting, with the poll-reading community up-voting the best video comments for each given question.

I agree with the others--video presentations take too long to parse.

Besides, I only watch videos from the 70s. If you want me to watch your video comment you'll have to travel back in time and appear on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert or The Old Grey Whistle Test.

You don't get to watch/listen to the video comments at your own speed. I think that's an extremely important thing we rely on when surfing.

Video comments might be a way to control the flame baiting that happens with anonymous comments.

I don't know, maybe people will start leaving video comments while wearing troll masks and flamesuits?

Most people are just not as well spoken on camera as they are in text.