LW became more active lately, and grew old as experience, so it's likely I won't be skimming "recent comments" (and any comments) systematically anymore (unless I miss the fun and change my mind, which is possible). Reliably, I'll only be checking direct replies to my comments or private messages (red envelope).

A welcome feature to alleviate this problem would be an aggregator for given threads: functionality to add posts, specific comments and users in a set of items to be subscribed on. Then, all comments on the subscribed posts (or all comments within depth k from the top-level comments), and all comments within the threads under subscribed comments should appear together as "recent comments" do now. Each comment in this stream should have links to unsubscribe from the subscribed item that caused this comment to appear in the stream, or to add an exclusion on the given thread within another subscribed thread. (Maybe, being subscribed to everything, including new items, by default, is the right mode, but with ease of unsubscribing.)

This may look like a lot, but right now, there is no reading load-reducing functionality, so as more people start actively commenting, less people will be able to follow.