(See I have to do this, otherwise there is no way to indicate assent. For PG to know this is popular, if he just looks at the regular site page, he would need a huge string of such comments.)
I would leave the top comment both as introduction for the new thread and at its original location, with a link to the new topic.
I also think it might be possible to somewhat automatically detect such branches. That would make it easier for the 'some' that get this power to detect them.
However, if one has such software, it might be better and easier to 100% automatically collapse all candidate threads with a generated remark "this appears to start a new topic", ideally with keywords describing what the topic is about)
To better illustrate this effect, let me present an example. When I'm reading a comment and it makes an initial impression on me (good or bad), I have to decide whether I'm going to vote on it (if I'm unsure, I'll just leave it unmoderated). When I see the score, it gives me more confidence in my opinion so I vote more.
If others fall victim to this similar pattern of behavior we'll wild variation in comment votes and we'll see scale free behavior of votes (i.e. preferential attachment, comments with higher votes will tend to get more votes).
The reason probably being that when you look at a commentscore you assess whether it has the right score, and if it doesn't you vote it up (or down). If you can't see the scores you can't do this.
Why vote? No one but you knows you did. The comment owner gets a number showing only assent or dissent which usually is irrelevant to their purpose for commenting.
The comments still form an N-ary tree. Useful top-level comments also take not-so-useful comments on them to the top. With the points visible, I could tell just by looking. Given the lack of time, I now find myself reading just the top-level (not top-on-the-page) comments.
- low effort for drive-by downmods (there are stupid numbers of comments blasted to nothing despite being insightful or informative)
- upvote doesn't distinguish between 'I agree' and 'hey, this is really informative'; the former is mostly meaningless, the latter is useful
- single downmod diminishes what you said and makes it harder to read (on an already low-contrast site). Hardly fair given the ease of 'drive-bys'.
The forum I spend most of my time on has a reason required for the mod - it's not this brainless +/- system that the web is moving towards. You get an idea why people are up/downmodding, and it raises the bar ever so slightly so that it takes actual effort to mod (that is, critique) a comment. The displayed point value is also capped - while the user gets the karma for the mod, it's not displayed beyond a certain cap.
Mostly I see the benefit of this system as stopping mindless up/downvoting - requiring the tiniest bit of effort produces better quality results. Still not perfect, but much, much better.
Also, what you characterize as "drive by voting", I think of as being "lightweight feedback". Sure, we could make things a wee bit harder so a (much) smaller fraction of people would vote with with more deliberation, but I'm not sure that actually improves things.
Seriously though, this is a problem I think a lot about. One solution that keeps popping up in my head is implemented in an OS forum somewhere (don't recall specifics), so that each comment can be marked as informative/funny/shocking/etc instead of mere upvotes.
Downvotes should go along similar lines so downmodded people don't have to beg for reasons. If "it makes boring reading" [1], don't make people write it!
The "lightweight feedback" is "throwaway feedback", because you really only see how unpopular a comment is (is it dead yet? oop! there it goes!). Only the owner knows how popular it is, and even then, doesn't know if it's just a bunch of 'yeah, me too!' or 'that was informative or insightful!'
The most egregious example of 'why is this modded so' is this comment, so much so that I've stuck it in my profile:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3087822
The thread was about RMS and what an eccentric he is, and about his comments subsequent to Steve Jobs' death. The comment is defending RMS using an oft-quoted verse of Jobs', where he defends mavericks making their own rules and violating the status quo. The comment makes a very insightful link, and is not offensive or malicious. Yet it's downmodded to dead status, something that other comments in the same thread didn't have happen despite being much more fractious. Why was it downmodded? Who can say? It's probably fanboys, nothing else makes sense from a mature point of view.
Which reminds me of another issue with the mod system: it's totally anonymous. There is no accountability. You can diminish someone else's statement without giving a reason why nor standing behind it with your own name/pseudonym. Again, the forum I come from gives you the option to see who modded a comment whichever way - which while there is the occasional problem, is overall a significant net gain for an online community that strives to keep things mature.
How do you know?
All I see is some fading, which presumably means a comment has been heavily downvoted? But for all I know it could mean the commenter is new, or they're generally downvoted, or something else (perhaps it's cold in their city?).
I find this handled helpfully by http://hckrnews.com/about.html
In reality you would get situations where someone would post a thoughtful and well-reasoned comment (2 points) and someone would reply with a very minor correction (12 points).
It also seemed like "wars" were fought over points too, purely anecdotally.
My own experience is that voting now seems to be more rational. People seem to upvote when something should be upvoted (my guess is that this topped out before if someone thought a comment had too many votes). When something is negative, it's indicated so it doesn't tend to get downvoted into oblivion.
As for curating interesting comments to the top, this happens now and seems to work quite well.
I just wish there was a way to:
- Look at comments you haven't seen yet; and
- Filter comments by "quality", sorta like Slashdot has. The meaning of this can be vague and "quality" doesn't have to be a straight point measure but I'd like to see a way to just see the best comments, particularly when there are 300+ comments.