I think the best solution would be thread folding (which I know is being worked on anyway) where the default is that all threads are collapsed. Then, off topic discussion wouldn't take up any more than a single post's worth of space by default. Having it be a conscious choice to move deeper into a thread also ensures that no one has to scroll past much content they don't care about.

Whe someone writes an interesting technical post about Cache Line Aliasing it's a shame when the most visible commet is a complaint about the blog platform.

I want more articles like that on HN so I'm going to stop leaving empty comments about page design on HN unless, like this example, the design is an intrinsic part of the submission.

And even here I could have worded my post much better.

Having said all that: a lot of the stuff submitted here is not accessible and that's a shame. It feels like we've gone backwards. Where you used to have a web page that had keyboard navigable elements that would announce themselves to the assistive technology it feels like we now have apps that abandoned usability and started making it up as they go along. What happens when you press and hold and image? What happens when you put your phone into landscape? Who knows, everyone does things differently.