Does anyone use the Comments link in the top navbar?

Question

With so many comments posted constantly on HN what is the use of the top navbar new Comments link? Is it simply a relic of the past where the site was much smaller and you could actually refresh that page after a few minutes to get a new comment instead of going to every story and refreshing it?

ElSinchi · Accepted Answer

Yes I use it often to get a feeling about whats being discussed, as I won't check every link and headlines are often misleading
Many times comments piqued my interest o. What otherwise would look like q boring post
Think of it, if you want, as a random sample of what's going on, like when you do inferential statistics to know something about a too large population

olvy0 · Answer

I use it too, at least once a week if not more, to see what people are talking about, and like ElSinchi wrote, to get a general feeling of what people are talking about.
And like other people here said, I found many interesting comments, links and users through this instead of by going through the front page.
I agree that as a method to follow discussions it's not useful due to the large volume of comments posted, and I don't know if it was intended to be used that way back in the day, but it still has its place, at least for me.

usrn · Answer

I use it almost exclusively. I want to see what other people are talking about.