first of all, there is no way for SQL to sort the comments that way and still use an index.
Secondly, it promotes threads which are well-reasoned responses to 1's. This is good, but you shouldn't be reading anything with an initial comment of rating 1 anyway.
The only other thing it could do is pull down comments rated 5 which have a bunch of 1-3 replies to them.
Try doing: order highest first, less than 50 == nested, more than 50 == minimal (in your comment preferences settings, I believe).
It's pretty sweet. You get a quick overview of all the different threads going on, as well as the ability to 'open in new window' to see the full thread of comments that you're interested in. Probably the best thing about scoop is that it doesn't automagically put an "re: $parent_title" as the subject, forcing people to think about a good title for their posting.
--Robert
