One of the simple features of Reddit (and Digg before it) was that upvoted comments would float to the most visible part of the comments section and downvoted comments would end up buried where no one would see them.

That not only made the comment section a much more useful/interesting/pleasant place to be (with all the caveats about the hive mind etc), it also incentivised people to make good comments.

Here on kbin, we only have the following sort options:

• Hot
• Active
• Newest
• Oldest

Three of which basically just sort by New. I guess ‘Active’ is the closest to ‘Best’ or ‘Top’, but it’s not the default.

To get kbin to that point where its growth really snowballs into the definitive reddit alternative, I think comments should not only have the ‘Top’ and ‘Best’ sorting options, but one of them should be default as well.