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    If this were deletion then yes, it'd be a major problem, but it's just de-emphasizing them by adding a clickthrough. Something doesn't need to be detrimental to warrant less emphasis, it just needs to not be specifically called out as worth emphasizing. Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 20:36
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    But keen users can always expand the comments and upvote those they deem helpful, right? I would cancel or at least lower the 5 seconds rate limiting to help them do this, I see many users finding that limit very frustrating and it might be part of the reason for the low comment votes in general. Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 20:37
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    @Servy If I have to click that link every time just in case there's something useful in the comments, haven't we failed? We should be pretty sure there's nothing useful if we're hiding something by default. Right now a question with hidden comments is the exception, not the norm. This is reversing that. Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 20:44
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    It's difficult to know how to study this statistically. However, here's a random sample of singleton comments that don't have upvotes. It occurs to me that so far there's no practical reason for people to upvote a singleton comment since there's no display difference. I'm not sure how many people make that calculation, but I know I have. Perhaps skipping the hiding algorithm for posts with, say, 1 to 2 comments would preserve more of the signal? Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 20:49
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    Keeping N comments always displayed doesn't seem like a bad idea to me (basically the current system but with a better way of determining what gets shown before you have to click through). I haven't seen much below the threshold I'd care to read personally, but I'll admit I've been looking at very active questions when I composed my answer. Very inactive ones merit some attention too... Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 20:54
  • What about basing the comment time cutoff on post age and activity? Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 21:42
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    @hexafraction I think we'd get the same results by only applying the age-out aspects if there are more comments than get displayed by default (i.e. show everything until we have 6 comments, When there are 6 or more apply the algorithm to determine which comments are "above the fold") -- simplicity is elegance :) Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 23:33
  • The click through is already annoying in the current implementation, especially since the hidden comments don't get downloaded with the page, and thus clicking through requires internet connectivity. Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 19:19