We know how it goes... the first few people to comment on a post get upvoted and tend to gather a lot of upvotes and stay there... this makes the Top comment sorting really mostly work as an "oldest first" sorting and defeats the purpose.

What if top-level comment order were randomized by default (that is, every time a user refreshes the post, the comments are reordered randomly)? Then sorting by Top would end out being a little more meaningful... maybe? (This wouldn't make much difference for posts with only a handful of comments, but I think it could make a difference on the really busy posts.)

Also, making it so users could specify what they want their default to be in the settings might be a good idea (they could choose to automatically sort by Top or New if desired).

Edit: or, to make an even more complex programming job... ~evil laugh~ ...maybe make random sorting default for users, top sorting default for people not logged in (makes us present a better face and they can't vote anyway), and top sorting default for all posts over one month old (so the comments are initially more fluid but when visiting older posts you by default see the "best of" as voted by users).