Too often, I see a heavily-downvoted comment at the top of the thread with a dozen children. Example. I like the idea of highlighting comments that generate discussion, but comments that are just dumb/hostile/trolling should not be the first comment I see in the thread.
Hey Carnicore,
There are a few methods of sorting available. You can switch to Chronological View on the left which simply shows posts in the order they were made, and you can switch to New sorting while in Discussion View. Unfortunately, beyond that there isn't any other way to sort the content; we don't have a way to determine that a particular discussion is "bad" and shouldn't be the one displayed on top if it's got the most activity and votes. If moderation determines that a particular comment or discussion in a thread is very valuable and needs to be visible above the rest when it otherwise isn't we can pin it to the top, but we can't do that with every thread where the "Best" discussion isn't particularly valuable to some people. Sorry I can't do more for you there!
