I think a big upgrade for both HN and Reddit would be so simply collapse all child comments by default and only show top-level comments. That way every person doesn't have to scroll past the first thread to find the second top-level discussion.
I don't think threads should be locked, though. There is nothing on Reddit more annoying than not being able to reply to someone because of an arbitrary decision (like a mod locking the entire submission). There are better solutions. But it just seems silly to shut down discussion when people want to have it on a social site.
Even sinking a thread to the bottom is better than locking it.
One website that I think has nailed comment moderation is the website Tweakers.net. A Dutch tech website and forum.
On Tweakers you (as a user) can apply for mod rights and it allows you to rate each comment from -1 to +3.
+3 = must-read
+2 = informative
+1 = on-topic
0 = off topic
-1 = spam / insult
There's an alogrithm that gives your rating more weight if they (retroactively) allign with what the supermods (employees of the site) rate comments.
On Tweakers you almost never read insults and "and my axe" repititive comments because they are hidden by default, and the +2 and +3 comments automatically get places at the top.
This has so much over a simple +1 / -1 system. I wish more website would think about their comments systems and how they can achieve a good incentive and moderation structure for informative comments to be lifted up and unwanted ones down.
Tweakers is Dutch but to get an idea here's a news thread with a lot of comments:
Similar to the excellent Slashdot moderation system. Moreover on Slashdot you couldn't just moderate at will, occasionally you would find yourself with 5 moderation points to spend upvoting or downvoting 5 comments.
Even more occasionally you would find yourself with some 'meta-moderation' points - where it displays some moderation decisions and asks whether you agree/disagree that this was good moderation
Slashdot's moderation has still yet to be beaten IMO, when up/downvoting a post you had to specify why you were doing so from a defined list, including things like Funny, Informative, Flamebait, and Trolling. Then as mentioned meta-moderation would occasionally ask a user to review those votes, asking the question "Was this post funny" for example. User's who's moderation points were upheld in meta-moderation would be more likely to get given more than someone who flung them out at random.
The real genius of the system though was the amount of configurability attached to those topics. Each user could define what those categories meant to them, so if you only wanted the serious stuff you could say Funny didn't get a +1 boost when displaying comments, and give it a -1 instead. Or -5 if you really hated Slashdot humour. In the other direction lovers of a good flame war could boost comments flagged as flamebait up in the sorting order. This also extended to relationships, where you could flag people as either friends or foes, allowing you to make sure you always saw comments from people who's comments you enjoyed, and squash anything by people you just didn't like.
All of that was an absolute nightmare for performance I'm sure, which is probably why we don't see it these days, but it was a thing of beauty.
Another great thing about the Slashdot moderation system was the "overrated" and "underrated" tags. A comment could get moderated as "-1 Flamebait" then get moderated as "+1 Underrated" all the way up to "+5 Flamebait". My personal favourite quirk of the system.
Slashdot's mod system was ... reasonably good at deprecating garbage. It did poorly at elevating true quality, however. The mod activity was too thin and non-convergent (each moderation moved. by a full point on a +5 -- (-2) scale).
I'd been on the site since before registration and moderation existed, and had a very low UID, back when that ... still really didn't matter.
Kuro5hin's "mean of moderation" system converged (within a five point scale, much like Amazon star ratings), though in practice people vastly overaward high scores.
Explicit scoring systems are difficult to design. They also leak insane amounts of personal information.
While the Tweakers system might be nicer in some ways, I think the problem of new comments having no visibility still applies to the site in practice. Maybe that's less of an issue because it's a news site, but still.
Sidenote: what's ironic in your linked post is that the only comment with a +3 rating is factually incorrect. The author claims that there is no currently known quantum algorithm that breaks ECDSA.
I think the actual values of the upvotes should be hidden, but the different upvote types should just be names - informative vs funny, vs analytic, etc...
Not sure it should be all children. But maybe 2 deep or something. For instance your comment would be unseen if it was collapsed at the top level, but yours is what sparked my reply. It does get weird though, because then people would just be incentivised to reply at the top level. And end up a longer thread there. I guess if its not completely collapsed there is always going to be some attempt to reply in the right place because you will get more views there instead of a top level comment.
Also curious about being able to make a web extension that collapses at a certain configurable level. Or even reordering. Not that it helps most users. But would be interesting.
Interesting idea. If the reply chain is expanded by default, whichever top-level comment rises to the top tends to steer the direction of the discussion. This is especially troublesome on Slashdot where comments are shown in chronological order, regardless of score.
> But it just seems silly to shut down discussion when people want to have it on a social site.
Locking is meant to be used when a thread is filling with toxic bile and there's little chance of things improving. I don't think it's always wrong for mods to lock a thread.
They have some form of that already as it is, but I'm not 100% sure how it works. Some comment replies have the first few replies and then it shows a 'Show 43 more comments' button to expand that depth level, but some comments go 3,4,5 levels deep.
Maybe if it was more predictable and shallower it would be good, the problem is its annoying to keep clicking show replies to load more levels
Such a bad idea. A set of comment threads is going to be a tree of some type and you need to decide if it will be deep or wide. This promotes wide with very little justification beyond 'I didnt get in early on the discussion but still want a high-ranked comment' while the idea of allowing people to necro old threads is so bad it does not even merit discussion (seriously, go try out some forum that allows this and it will take you no time at all to realize that this is a phenomenally bad idea.)
I think both ideas are good, and I don’t find your dismissive objection persuasive. The point of hiding all but top-level posts wasn’t about making comments.
It was about reading them. Specifically that with fully expanded comments, users have to scroll past even downvoted, flagged responses to the top comment before seeing the second-highest voted top-level response.
I don't think threads should be locked, though. There is nothing on Reddit more annoying than not being able to reply to someone because of an arbitrary decision (like a mod locking the entire submission). There are better solutions. But it just seems silly to shut down discussion when people want to have it on a social site.
Even sinking a thread to the bottom is better than locking it.