[zanny]

I think the better solution is to just hide the "discussion" part from the content by default. If you are in a comment section, you are looking for one of two things - information on the topic (usually restricted to the top 2 levels of a comment thread) or discussion (the deep trees Jeff complains about).

Making that discussion flat doesn't make people want to read it, get involved in it, or understand the exchange. Comments / forum threads are trying to serve two distinct purposes.

My solution would be to have the comment tree hidden by default.(tangentially, I wonder if a system where comments move to the right relative to their time posted, not just in order, since that is why we are moving comments rightward anyway - that way a comment thread would map the post times out rightward. Since replies could only come to already posted content, the flow still moves right, but the active discussions still show themselves off) If people want to see the discussion on top level comments, it should be a very obvious and very apparent mechanism to reveal a discussion tree, but otherwise, let people browse the top level first (with a ranking system, not just by time) and find discussions they are interested in. That is my biggest problem with all the reddit-esque sites where discussions take up tons of my vertical space by default even if I don't actively seek to engage in them.