It mostly does the opposite because it means getting replies quickly tapers off. After a few days the odds of keeping up a discussion are low, and older discussions are baiscally locked out forever.
Look at any post that gets a significant number of comments and then scroll to pick out the deepest threads. When the depth comes from lots of people adding information or opinions, the quality is generally pretty high. When the depth comes from a small number of people going back-and-forth, it’s usually not very interesting.
Adding more of the latter type would make HN worse and that’s what you would get more of if they made HN work more like Reddit.
> Reducing back-and-forth discussions is a feature.
So your opinion is that discussions are bad.
> When the depth comes from lots of people adding information or opinions, the quality is generally pretty high.
That's not a discussion that’s a lot if people broadcasting into the void (it’s also not true, if lots of people are replying to the same comment they’re usually adding identical or strongly overlapping information on a relatively basic subject).
