Having this discussion is great.  I'm glad there are plans by PG to implement improvements.  I have been a <i>reader</i> of HN for years now, but I rarely comment.  Not because I don't want to participate, I <i>do</i> want to participate.  And I want to participate civilly and without nastiness.<p>The reason I rarely comment is simply my own reading habits and the way the site works.  I read HN on a mobile device via an RSS reader.  I flag the threads in my reader I find interesting to look at further on my next work day when I'm sitting in front of my desktop machine.<p>However, by the time I return to a thread it's usually old and no longer active.  At that point, I rarely see any reason to comment, as it likely won't be seen.<p>What I, personally, would love is a way to subscribe to a thread's comments in some way, perhaps via rss.  That would help me to track the follow-up comments made on the few posts I do comment on.  But, if there are others like me, perhaps having a way for people to more easily follow threads would bring more people into the discussion and bring more of the prolific commenters <i>back</i> to the discussion.<p>When I implemented an email notification system for commenters on my blog which notifies each commenter when a new comment is posted, community engagement skyrocketed.  I used to get 4-5 comments a post and it's now regularly up in the 40,50,60 comment range. I also found that eliminating anyone who starts getting "trollish" from getting those email updates tends to make them naturally drop out of the thread because they think no further comments are being made.<p>Anyway, just my two cents. I may be way off-base on this idea, and if so, PG is obviously free to ignore it and I will continue to love HN all the same.<p>Look forward to the changes.