[SCdF]

I didn't down-vote you, but "collapsible comments are a pig to use" isn't really a statement I can get behind, nor a statement with any real value (what does "a pig to use" mean, practically?)

I use a (slightly modified) Chrome plugin to clean up HN's styling to make it more readable. Most importantly it adds collapsable comments, without which I would enjoy HN much less.

Collapsable comments makes it easy to tell what you have and haven't read, and to easily skip large threads which bore you without having to mentally watch the invisible vertical line and scroll until it comes back it.

[JupiterMoon]

Yeah "a pig to use" might come across as inflammatory and I guess that this expressing my personal preference (which is just as valid as yours but clearly neither are objectively correct).

Disclosure I use no script and am very happy that HN works without any javascript.

Practically I find collapsible comments highly annoying in every case I've seen them used. This is probably because they seem to either (1) require javascript, or (2) require page reloads, or (3) both.

In the case of HN, dang et al do a good job of detaching irrelevant comments.

I guess that collapsible comments should be one of those optional features that could be available with javascript but gracefully degrade to showing the full tree without.