Very interesting and full of bigger questions!

Are rewritten comments (that potentially no one actually said) better? At which point are you just reading what you want to hear instead of actually hearing what people are saying?

there is so much snark here.

I did something related recently to read all HN comments by category (assigned by Jev) instead of linearly

https://github.com/ritza-co/hn-jev-sorter

So all the snarky ones are together. I like reading them, but sometimes I want to see just a particular kind of comment (or just see the overall summary of how many people decided to be snarky vs helpful)

Nice one. I think apart from rewriting, simply removing comments that are snarky AND low-"depth" and surface level snark will be useful, maybe as a toggle. Since you are already computing this.

Awesome. Brilliant. Let's strip out even the tiny bit of humanity that seeps through this forum's pedantic and ever growing list of guidelines and all come off like we're giving a talk about screw threading at a fastener conference at a Holiday Inn, and not even hung over perfectly sober. That will make the inevitable transition to fully automated comments in the dead internet wasteland even easier. I feel like we should be getting editors' fees for how much work we have to do to conform to the thought police here.

The snark is the only thing fun about this place. Remember fun? Remember when fun was legal? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Y'alls heads are so far up your asses that the fart clouds have cut off the oxygen to your brains.

... OK let's see what it does.