They are terrible -- there is a reason you're using hacker news and probably reddit. The voting system is far superior to any FIFO out Pringles can of comments.

> there is a reason you're using hacker news

It's not because of the threaded comments with vanity-metrics, I can tell you that :) I've gone as far as to write my own HN client that displays HN comments as a flat list of comments, sorted by date that also folds in whatever they replied to as a proper quote, so you can follow along. Looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/TNfg9Vg.png

Surely, I cannot be alone in sometimes going extreme lengths to remove this sort of pointless popularity sorting?

Voting systems indirectly operate as propaganda that tells you what to believe and how to conform with the hive mind. “Good thought” is conveniently found at the top with a large number of virtual points, “bad thought” is hidden for you at the bottom in harder-to-read colour.

I surely am not the only one that often skips to comments without even reading the article, which is tantamount to saying “I don’t have time to form my own opinion. Tell me what to believe about this topic”

> there is a reason you're using hacker news and probably reddit

It's a good place to talk stuff that's popular, but discussions fade and die quickly.

Also, I still use vBulletin-like forums.

Examples from the last decade I still use: mbworld.org for discussing Mercedes cars, bitcointalk, hwupgrade, overclockers.uk and some others.

Reddit/Twitter absolutely cannot replace any of those I listed for long lasting specific discussions, they are just unfit.

I use HN and reddit because they are a source of interesting third party articles on random topics that then can be discussed in depth. Forums are a source of original discussion on a given topic. Those are very different things that meet very different needs.