Threads are sorted by comment score and by age, with newer threads floating to the top. I think this is a great heuristic.
My only beef is that this also naturally floats poor replies to great comments. It would be nice to have a good heuristic to know when to read the replies and when to move on to the next thread. I think one does exist: expandos. Give us the ability to expand and compact threads, and then automatically compact any old replies that haven't received a reasonable number of upvotes. I use the extension from hckrnews.com to give me expandos, but intelligent compaction would be so much sweeter.
Just as bad as uplifting poor replies to great comments, it pushes down great replies to poor comments. I've seen some threads were the most informative and insightful comment was halfway down the page because it was a reply correcting misconceptions.
The only solution I can think of are collapsable threads, similar to reddit.
+/- expansion/contraction seems like a good idea to me too. It would be a good way for me to hide the occasional off topic argument between a couple of individuals and to find the grand.. parent of a comment.
My only beef is that this also naturally floats poor replies to great comments. It would be nice to have a good heuristic to know when to read the replies and when to move on to the next thread. I think one does exist: expandos. Give us the ability to expand and compact threads, and then automatically compact any old replies that haven't received a reasonable number of upvotes. I use the extension from hckrnews.com to give me expandos, but intelligent compaction would be so much sweeter.