Ask HN: Would it be useful if we had a comments visualizer?

For e.g. take some HN post. Assume its a hot topic. Lot of comments. Would it make sense if someone developed a system that would take all comments and arranged it graphically? It would also provide the ability to makes notes at each item. The experience should be a simple click "previous" or "next", but we should be able to get a gist of that thread quickly...