Top results.

On a single post

Focused analysis of that one thread.

1. Fetch the post — one request, up to 100 top-level comments along with all their nested replies inlined.
2. Walk the whole comment tree, top-level and nested alike, collecting every commenter.
3. Skip [deleted] accounts and AutoModerator.
4. Tally — whoever commented the most in this specific thread wins.
5. Score the tone of the conversation using a built-in sentiment lexicon (positive vs. negative word patterns, with negation and intensifier awareness).
6. Pull out the top repeating 3-word phrases so you can see what people keep saying.

A 100-comment thread with many levels of nested replies can easily produce several hundred author entries to rank. If u/alice posts 15 comments scattered through the thread — some top-level, some replies, some replies-to-replies — she's ranked by those 15 combined. No weighting by position, no upvote weighting, no de-duplication by sub-thread — just raw count.

Edges worth knowing

• Reddit's 100-comment cap is on top-level comments. Nested replies under them still count, so a thread can tally 800+ comments in total.
• "Continue this thread" placeholders (deep or truncated subtrees) are not expanded.
• OP is counted like any other commenter. There is no "exclude OP" rule.
• Stickied or pinned comments are counted.
• Mod-removed comments surface as [deleted] and are dropped before tallying.

On a subreddit or front page

Aggregate analysis across the sub's visible threads.

1. Fetch the sub's listing — the ~30 posts currently visible on that page.
2. Pick the first 10 non-stickied posts.
3. For each of those 10 posts, pull up to 100 top-level comments (plus their nested replies).
4. Collect every commenter across all 10 threads.
5. Tally — whoever appears most across all gathered comments wins.
6. Run the same sentiment scoring and top-phrases extraction across the combined text.

Sort order matters

The extension uses whatever sort is active — including when the sort was changed via Reddit's dropdown rather than the URL. On the new Reddit SPA the URL often stays /r/sub/ even when you're viewing "New" or "Top," so the extension reads the active sort directly from the page's DOM to match what you're actually looking at. Supported sorts: hot, new, top, rising, controversial (sub), and hot, new, top, rising, best (front page).

That means the same subreddit produces different results depending on what you're viewing:

• Hot / Top — the first 10 are high-engagement threads with lots of comments. Rich data, sharp ranking.
• New — the first 10 are the newest submissions. Often barely any comments yet; expect a sparse, possibly empty top-10.
• Rising — posts gaining traction. Medium comment density.
• Controversial — high-activity threads where debate is dense. Good signal for active commenters, skewed toward argumentative users.
• Best (front page only) — personalized home-feed ordering.

Time filters like ?t=week on /top are not passed to the API call — Reddit's default window (day) applies regardless of what you see on-screen. If you want this week's top commenters, wait for a fuller fix; for now, know the API result may not exactly match the page you're looking at.

What it actually measures

"Who are the most frequent commenters across the first 10 posts on this page, in whatever order Reddit is serving them — plus how positive or negative those comments read, and what phrases keep coming up."

Concrete example

Say r/programming sorted by Hot right now: the first 10 posts were submitted by 9 different users, and those 10 threads collectively contain 900 comments from 500 unique commenters. The ranking shows those 500 commenters ranked by comment count — not the 9 submitters.

So if u/alice never submits posts but comments 40 times across those 10 threads, she's #1. If u/bob submitted 3 of the 10 posts but never comments, he doesn't appear at all. Switch the same sub to /new and hit Analyze again, and you'll likely get a totally different (and much sparser) ranking — because you're looking at a different 10 posts.

On a user profile

Different question, different answer.

1. Fetch the user's public overview — their recent posts and comments, up to 100 items.
2. Group those items by subreddit.
3. Tally — whichever subreddits the user spends the most time in show up at the top.

This doesn't rank commenters; it ranks where the user is most active. Use it to quickly read a profile: is this person mostly on r/hockey and r/boston, or are they everywhere?

Private, suspended, or shadowbanned accounts return no public items and produce an empty ranking.

Sentiment and phrases

Reading the room, not just counting it.

Sentiment uses a hand-curated lexicon of ~400 positive and negative words tuned for Reddit vocabulary (including slang like "based," "banger," "meh," "trash"). It handles negation ("not good" flips to negative) and intensifiers ("really awful" scores stronger than "awful"). Scores are length-normalized so long comments don't automatically swing the average. The result: an overall tone label (positive / slightly positive / neutral / slightly negative / negative) plus the positive-neutral-negative breakdown of the analyzed comments.

Top phrases are the 3-word sequences that repeat most across the gathered comments, with common filler ("in the," "of the") filtered out via a stopword list. A phrase has to appear at least twice to surface. This reveals the shared language of a thread or sub — the running jokes, the product names, the talking points — without you having to read all 900 comments yourself.

Both run on the same comment text the top-commenters ranking already fetched. No extra network calls.

Privacy

Your data stays on your device.

• All analysis runs locally in your browser. No results are sent to ThoughtLab or any third party.
• If you are logged into Reddit, the extension uses your existing Reddit session only to let the requests go through faster. That session information is read from reddit.com and sent only back to reddit.com, never anywhere else.
• To detect which sort is active on a subreddit or front page, the extension briefly injects a small read-only script into the Reddit page. It only reads the sort selector in the DOM. It does not modify the page, fetch remote code, or send anything anywhere.
• The extension only runs when you click its icon. It has no background scripts watching pages.

Limits

What's inside the box.

• Per post: up to 100 top-level comments (plus their nested replies).
• Per sub or front page: up to 10 posts analyzed.
• Per user profile: up to 100 recent public items.
• Deleted accounts and AutoModerator are excluded from the ranking.
• Sentiment scoring only reflects words in the built-in lexicon; sarcasm, context, and in-jokes won't register.
• Phrases require at least two occurrences to surface, so very small comment sets may produce no phrases at all.
• If you re-analyze repeatedly without waiting, Reddit may temporarily rate-limit you. Waiting a minute resolves it.