Another way to boost discussion time would probably be to cut page load time in half.
What's the current excuse for 4 second page times (on nearly pure text pages) and up to 30 second new-post times, with hundreds of advanced developers around offering free help?
IIRC these are wait times deliberately engineered by pg/said-advanced-developers for various reasons. I remember reading that there is a cool-off period to discourage hasty comments and fast growing off-topic comment trees. There also appears to be intentional slow load response times for posters with certain negative comment thresholds. I cannot officially confirm any of these.
I agree though, the restrictions are arbitrary and unnecessary.
I thought the cool-off time was enforced by setting progressively longer times for the "reply" link to appear as threads lengthen. The idea is that as exchanges get longer, the probability of needing a "cooling off" period before replying increases.
like any self-respecting hacker, PG cares a lot more about having fancy expiring hashmaps of closures than having fast code ;) what do you think 'fnid' means in http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=5DHNoqDkUn ?
What's the current excuse for 4 second page times (on nearly pure text pages) and up to 30 second new-post times, with hundreds of advanced developers around offering free help?