The downside with reddit-/hn-style comment is that, while they provide a superior UI for discussions, the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. It makes it's hard to get a high quality discussion about new/breaking topics.

What I mean is that, for new products, the threads that get the greatest discussion liquidity are those where not a single person knows a thing about it. So you'll get hundreds to thousands of comments that don't have a clue. In this world, influence concentrates around people with pre-release access to these products.

In the HN/Reddit paradigm, how do people impart their experiences with a model like Fable? You could submit a new blog post and some people will comment on that to discuss their experiences. You could do an Ask HN but those don't get much traction.

Old style forums were a pain in the butt to read but they were better for focused discussion over time.

Forums handled this by bumping old threads to the top when a new comment was added. This post sorting method could play nicely with tree style comments

I agree for the most part, though it's worth pointing out that HN specifically has a mitigating characteristic in this case, which is that repeat posts are not moderated away, and are in fact encouraged.

Case in point, one if today's top posts is on knoppix. Definitely not early adopter material! :)

I agree more generally though. While I understand the benefits of a 14day response window, it really does destroy the ability to find a thread that is useful in a more anachronistic manner.