[dspillett]

Measures of “overheated discussion” probably can't distinguish easily between matters that are purely divisive and those that are genuinely complex/interesting/ground-breaking/surprising/etc (so deserving of that much of people's time). Whether punishing based on this measure for this reason is beneficial overall or not is a divisive discussion in its own right!

[andrewflnr]

Not easily, no, but I think a very fast reply frequency, especially between lots of pairs of two people, is more indicative of heat than light. :) (who knows, maybe the algorithm will think that about this reply) Genuinely interesting topics probably require more time to write worthwhile comments on, and draw in more people.

(To be clear, I'm not implying nor do I think that HN uses raw comment-count as a signal of overheating, just expressing my surprise at the previous poster's surprise at seeing high-ranked stories with few comments, since the correlation should run the other way if at all.)