It would be nice to be able to collapse a string of comments to easily see other comments and which comment they referred to.

Find the comment where you want to hide everything below that, click or tap the bottom line of the comment.

It's true. I've tapped by accident and wonder where all the comments went, lol. Turns into like a "click to show" type thing.

They r

Only on certain browsers

just tap anywhere on the comment that isn't a button and it will collapse ;)

it felt like adding an extra button on the side of the comment or something would clutter the screen and be awkward to click

strange, it is just using the standard "click" event so it should in theory work for all browsers and devices. Apple does weird things sometimes though.

I guess if it did that on a tablet, it would be difficult to select and copy the comment text.

I could definitely get on board with this.