Here are the top ten reddit comments from Feb of 2018, based on their character length multiplied by their votes.

E.g. the first comment has 5,144 characters with a vote of 42,457 so it had the highest rank of 218,398,808.

https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/7wwyw5/neckbeard_crew/du4cbk5
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7xkstl/shooting_at_south_florida_high_school/du94nag
https://www.reddit.com/r/uwaterloo/comments/7w0dgv/dave_tompkins_is_overrated/dtwzhbz
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7vwkqg/hey_reddit_what_products_are_identical_to_a_brand/dtvtkzd
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/80xs1v/china_bans_george_orwells_animal_farm_as_xi/duzfoko
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/80h9bj/why_is_it_okay_to_cook_some_animals_alive_while/duvwgg8
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7xztxf/who_is_the_worst_person_youve_ever_met/ducsa86
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7zwebj/barbershairdressers_of_reddit_how_exactly_do_you/durco2m
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7wi1g8/what_concept_fucks_you_up_the_most/du13k9x
https://www.reddit.com/r/wifesharing/comments/7wa854/my_bf_is_looking_for_inspiration_what_would_you/duz0q9l

On the whole, there does seem to be a correlation between comment length and comment quality, especially when votes are factored in. More details here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRC08EWmy1GgzdrIvR2p9EGUpQpIbYjp8MmvlgfNT4REbXbjxOUUdXBHMqXnF_4OGsR9PrV_-xuehlW/pubhtml

I originally posted this as a comment here but thought it might deserve it's own discussion.

I think that the rise of megathreads/ultrathreads/collections of threads on reddit has been a large detriment to the site.

I'm a mod for a few large subreddits that utilizes them (and I know a good portion of people reading Tildes right now are as well), and as time goes on I've started to dislike them more and more.

At first they were great - they seemed to silo off all the posts and noise that happened around an event, and made the lives of mods easier. Posts that should've been comments could now be removed, and the user could be pointed towards the megathread. Users could go back to the post and sort by new to see new posts, and know that they'd all have to do with that one topic.

I believe that this silo actually hurts the community, and especially the discussion around that original megathread, more than it helps. As modteams I think we underestimate the resilience of our communities, and their ability to put up with "noise" around an event.

The fact that we are in a subreddit dedicated to that cause should be silo enough - each post in that subreddit should be treated as an "atomic" piece of information, with the comments being branches. By relegating all conversation to a megathread we turn top level comments into that atomic piece of information, and subcomments into the branches.

But that's just a poor implementation of the original! There are some edge cases where this might make sense (take /r/politics, it wouldn't make sense to have 9 of the top 10 posts just be slightly reworded posts on the same issues), but I think this can be remedied by better duplication rules (consider all posts on a certain topic to be a repost, unless the new post has new or different information).

There is something to be said about the ability to generate a new, blank sheet of conversation with a post, that is not marred with previous information or anecdotes. New comments on a megathread post don't have that luxury, but new posts do.

Additionally, I feel like the way reddit originally conditioned us to view posts is to view them then not check them again (unless we interacted with someone in it or got a notification). This prevents potentially great (but late) content from gaining visibility, as a non-negligible portion of the population will still be browsing the subreddit, but will never click the post again.

I imagine that I'm not the only one here now that was part of the Digg exodus to Reddit many years ago and I wonder what you all think we can learn from the rise and fall of these platforms to better design our new community.

Is it inevitable that our social networks degrade with population until a new one rises from Its ashes, so to speak?

What can we do to protect ourselves from this pattern and maintain a healthy populace?