Even if you don’t turn off the social component of Google Reader completely, some conversations can become annoying if you use the ‘Comment view’. Items with new comments keep returning to the top of the page, which can be useful if you’re interested in the topic and want to see more opinions, but that’s not always the case. Since Reader is also integrated with Buzz, there is a good chance that you see the same stuff in both places or even have new comments delivered in your inbox as well.
@elvo86 If you'd like conversations to stop showing up in comment view, you can select it with j/k and use shift-m to mute it.
— Google Reader (@googlereader) May 20, 2010
Fortunately, the Reader team has a solution to hide individual conversations, like in Buzz: the keyboard shortcut Shift+m. You need to select the item first via keyboard. It doesn’t disappear instantly, but after you refresh the page it will no longer show up in the Comment view. It’s still visible in the ‘People you follow’ view and you can easily mute and un-mute it there using Shift+m again.
The feature is probably new, since it doesn’t have a corresponding user interface and isn’t listed together with the other keyboard shortcuts. Also, you shouldn’t expect a two way sync with Buzz: muting in Google Reader doesn’t have any effect on the visibility of the conversation in Buzz and vice versa. In any case, other updates are in the works, including something most users are anxious for ever since the Buzz launch: the ability to comment on any item shared from Reader, as long as it’s public.
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