I love the side and meta discussions and comments that happen on HN, but sometimes I just want to read the next comment that responds to the actual content of the article.
Would be lovely to be able to collapse a sub-thread (the way you can in many IDEs).
Would other users find this helpful as well?
Yes. Yes. Yes. To the point where I've almost tried to copy some HackerNews source code and complete a POC myself.
Others have commented that this feature already exists. And yes "technically" it may exist, but I'm guessing that you mean "by default". I absolutely agree that I should be able to set collapsible threads as the default.
It never fails on HN, that on some topic, the first/top comment and its replies span the _entire_ page! That's terrible UX! We want to see what other people have to say.
As a user/reader, let me dig into conversations/threads that I find interesting without having to scroll through pages and pages. Who's to say there aren't more interesting discussions buried underneath the top comment thread? Dang always has to post reminders saying to "not forget these pages of comments". If we had a collapsible thread, I believe he wouldn't have to do that as much.
This could be implemented with little-to-no fancy JS/whatever -- so that HackerNews remains as barebones as it is. Even better - if you let users choose whether or not they want the collapsible comments feature by using a setting on the user profile view. Everyone wins :)
Yeah, I'm also getting confused. Collapsible threads are enabled by defaults, unless I'm missing something. Maybe it's now about collapsed by default, i.e. you have to expand any comment thread you want to read?
