[jorvi]

> but there's not a lot of discussion for some reason

I mean... this is directly related to accounts being invite only.

It's a bit of a catch-22, the less friction to comment, the lower the quality but the higher the quantity.

Generally (let me preface: I do like HN as a whole) I dislike vote based or algorithmically driven discussion platforms. Vote based eventually ends up with the site having a certain inherent 'culture', and any comment not fitting in will at most get mildly upvoted and usually just ends up downvoted and collapsed / greyed out. Algorithmically driven, the engagement factor eventually just crowds out any other metric for valuing comments.

I like the setup of image boards (discussion boards?) the most. By default, everyone comments anonymously. Votes don't exist. There is no way to gain reputation points. Your post or comment stands on its own merit. Boring or (most) bait interaction get ignored whilst high quality interaction gets bumped to the front page more often. (Don't let 4Chan's two most infamous boards color your opinion for most other boards)

My personal perfect platform would be the imageboard way for content valuation and Reddit's old UI / UX.