An unthreaded version of Sort by New.
This. I guess it would be useful to have this function even for arbitrary subthreads, perhaps as a link on each non-leaf comment that leads to a simple page like "recent comments", but local to specific post or subthread.
(There are already RSS feeds for comments on a specific post and even in a specific subthread (!), but not for on-site viewing. So I'm guessing one approach could be to generalize the mechanism of RSS feeds and have on-site pages corresponding to all feeds, with links near the current "Subscribe to RSS Feed".)
I'd also appreciate some kind of thread subscription feature. Currently I have (checks) 6 thread in my "check daily" folder that I ave to scroll through rapidly and hope I don't miss anything green.
This feature already works (probably, I never used it directly). Open a permalink to the root comment of a thread you wish to follow, and use "Subscribe to RSS Feed" link on the right to receive updates within that thread.
Oooh, I didn't know about that! goes to try it
... Maybe it's just my RSS reader sucking, but I can't navigate this mess at all.
"Continue this thread" and "Comment score below threshold" could get a green glow if there are new comments behind the link.
An unthreaded version of Sort by New.