It helps you read comments. It does 4 things:
- sort by root comment, newest to oldest (byParent)
- sort by latest reply in comment thread, newest to oldest (byReply)
- shows you how many people have replied to your comment (example "4 replies")
- updates page with new comments and marks them as such (reload)
Here it is under bitbucket: hnjs
Sorting restructures the DOM. Only the reload function hits the server. Of course any changes to the HTML will break this badly. I've tested this with FF 3.5 & Safari 4 under OS X. And under latest Chrome in WinXP.