This sort of linking behavior actually irritates me. When there's a clear "parent" or "thread from start" link as there is on DW, I want to go straight to the comment being linked, without a whole row of who knows how many parents having to load. I can see how this would be useful to people who come from blog/discussion sites where that's the norm, but it's always bothered me. I tend to use sites/read comments and thread less often if it's showing me a bunch of parent comments instead of the *one* that I want to read.