Comment by mjn

To tackle it on the user rather than keyword level, I'd personally use a highlight/killfile extension for users, if one were available and didn't break things. Add some kind of highlight around the comments of users who are listed in the highlight file, and just remove the comments (and associated sub-thread) posted by users in the killfile.

At the moment I think I would highlight 10 users and killfile 2, and I think both moves would improve my HN experience.