There are many many polite or on topic posts that are not very good or even inane which hover at 0 or 1 karma. For many readers they simply aren’t worth the opportunity cost .
Idea:
Set the default visible level not to 0 but to 2 karma or some such number, much like people can currently set negative comments to unhidden. The exception to this should be when “Sort By” is set to “New”.
I think that could severely inhibit the growth of discussion. Every new comment starts at 0 karma, and if some people didn’t see those comments they wouldn’t get a chance to upvote them, and they would stay at 0.
Maybe have the comment threshold increase with the age of the comment. New comments should be visible at the current −1 threshold for a day or two but after that anything below 2 could be hidden. I think that immediately hiding comments would probably lead to fewer accurate comment ratings.
Another possibility is a user-selectable threshold.
Problem:
There are many many polite or on topic posts that are not very good or even inane which hover at 0 or 1 karma. For many readers they simply aren’t worth the opportunity cost .
Idea:
Set the default visible level not to 0 but to 2 karma or some such number, much like people can currently set negative comments to unhidden. The exception to this should be when “Sort By” is set to “New”.
I think that could severely inhibit the growth of discussion. Every new comment starts at 0 karma, and if some people didn’t see those comments they wouldn’t get a chance to upvote them, and they would stay at 0.
And when it is set to “Old”.
Maybe have the comment threshold increase with the age of the comment. New comments should be visible at the current −1 threshold for a day or two but after that anything below 2 could be hidden. I think that immediately hiding comments would probably lead to fewer accurate comment ratings.
Another possibility is a user-selectable threshold.
We don’t know how many people browse while they have sort set to New so you are right. Perhaps for comments older than a week or a month?