The Context of Labelling and Sorting Comments

This will be a mouthful.

It has already been suggested by Pat that comments can be labelled as 'Informative' or 'Funny' or that it contains a link ('Linked'?).

Then having the ability to sort according to your preference.

Well, i'd like to introduce and play with a few concerns and new concepts for further consideration.

Firstly, the ability to comment in response to a 'sub-comment' would be handy for ease of dialogue.

At the moment you can choose to sort comments by 'Date' while 'greying' those that are below a preferenced Digg rating OR sort by all ratings OR sort solely by rating.

Sorting solely by rating removes any coherence to discussion. It would be nicer if the 'root' or 'spawning' (whatever you want to call the original comment that starts a line of sub-comments) comments are those that are sorted.

How they are sorted opens up some possibilities:
- You could just have the 'root' comment followed by the date consecutive sub-comments.
OR
- You could have the 'root' comment followed by date consecutive AND popular sub-comments followed by the date consecutive UNpopular sub-comments.
OR, and infinitely more complex (consider it a challenge)
- You could calculate the total popularity of any given collection of comments and sub-comments ('trees') OR sub-comments and sub-sub-comments ('branches') etc. Using this information you can more effectively order popular discussion 'branches' in date consecutive order above increasingly more UNpopular 'branches' within similarly ordered 'trees' of comments.

Follow me?

Sounds complex, but i'm sure the end result will produce an intricate system of personlization that is both simple to use and easy to see the results of.

So let's say we now have 'Date', 'Diggs', 'Trees' and 'Trees & Branches' as sorting options.
'Trees' and 'Trees & Branches' could both become 'Maintain Context'. I'm just generating ideas.

What about the new ideas of having 'Informative', 'Funny' and 'Linked'?

Can they be coupled with any of the other sorting options?
Do they need to be?
Could you just sort by (Informative, Linked, Funny) OR (Linked, Informative, Funny) OR (Funny, Informative, Linked) OR (Funny, Linked, Informative)?
I don't see anyone really needing 'Funny' to be inbetween 'Linked' and 'Informative', but this could also be an option.

Sorted on their own like this, without consideration for date, diggs, or maintain context (trees and branches), one could easily find both links and some things that are funny.

BUT... would they find all things funny without a particular branch, or indeed tree, of conversation? Similarly, how informative are a mass of unconnected comments? 'Funny' and 'Informative' branches will have to be kept together to maintain context.

This raises the question of the need to vote on how informative or funny a comment is - ontop of how dugg it is. This 'complex' level of involvement could be a 'personal preference' option. The selection of which makes these deeper choices and sorting options available for the more involved user. A user 'just passing through' will not be immediately overwhelmed. The danger here is that a new user may never know that these options exist. It's a tricky one.

Last, but by no means in any particular order, is sorting of 'Informative', 'Funny', and 'Linked' comments in order of the number of Diggs they have received.

Well... i hope i didn't miss anything out :)