[glaugh]

Cool idea. Just to explore it further, I think it’d be interesting to create a model that included a couple other major factors, like when the comment was posted relative to the front-paging of the article and where the parent comment fell on the page (this comment is responding to the top comment, which will help it a lot).

I guess I’m not aware of an analysis with this goal (who and what types of comments engender more conversation) anywhere else, and actually doing it would probably be pretty fascinating. Again, cool idea.