I thought about that variant. I think I personally prefer having them actively hidden, because a major thing I want it for is attention management. When there are 100+ comments, I think it’s a valuable service to split them into “here’s what you should definitely look at if you want to be following key intellectual progress from this conversation” and “here’s what you should look at if you want to participate in long, sprawling conversations that I think are more about people engaging socially.” (I think the latter’s important, just not something I want to force everyone to read).
If the comments are just moved to the bottom, it’s not at all clear where to stop reading, and if I see a lot of comments I sometimes feel too intimidated to even start.
“When there are 100+ comments, I think it’s a valuable service to split them”—I agree with splitting them as well and I don’t have an issue with hiding them, but there’s two ways of splitting them. There’s the hiding option you’ve proposed and there’s the option of having a seperate Offtopic Comments header that marks that a new section of comments has begun. I’m not advocating for this as better than the other option, just listing it as a possibility.
I thought about that variant. I think I personally prefer having them actively hidden, because a major thing I want it for is attention management. When there are 100+ comments, I think it’s a valuable service to split them into “here’s what you should definitely look at if you want to be following key intellectual progress from this conversation” and “here’s what you should look at if you want to participate in long, sprawling conversations that I think are more about people engaging socially.” (I think the latter’s important, just not something I want to force everyone to read).
If the comments are just moved to the bottom, it’s not at all clear where to stop reading, and if I see a lot of comments I sometimes feel too intimidated to even start.
“When there are 100+ comments, I think it’s a valuable service to split them”—I agree with splitting them as well and I don’t have an issue with hiding them, but there’s two ways of splitting them. There’s the hiding option you’ve proposed and there’s the option of having a seperate Offtopic Comments header that marks that a new section of comments has begun. I’m not advocating for this as better than the other option, just listing it as a possibility.