If you collapse a comment in a thread it also collapses when viewing the comments page on a user's profile, and visually it is very hard to spot when collapsed on that page due to the styling.
For example, open the below link[0], collapse this comment, then refresh the link. The comment becomes quite hard to spot on that page. The red/orange star or vote button is also strangely missing while collapsed, which further makes it visually hard to distinguish.
I agree this is somewhat confusing. If I collapse a comment thread on a story page, I wouldn't expect that same comment to appear collapsed in every other context. The only other ones that come to mind right now are: on a user's comments page or the new user's favorites page.
This is a side-effect of how regular the HN codebase is at its best: when you make a change, you get it everywhere. It would require special code to make this not work on /threads pages. Perhaps we should do that, though.
Alternatively a style change would help massively. Even if the thread is hidden it should have the same anchoring on the page as a thread which is not, so the eye tracks the positional anchor.
If you collapse a comment in a thread it also collapses when viewing the comments page on a user's profile, and visually it is very hard to spot when collapsed on that page due to the styling.
For example, open the below link[0], collapse this comment, then refresh the link. The comment becomes quite hard to spot on that page. The red/orange star or vote button is also strangely missing while collapsed, which further makes it visually hard to distinguish.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Someone1234