It's been a UI element in that exact place since the site was created (https://web.archive.org/web/19980113191222/http://slashdot.org/) 17 years ago!

I found it so hard to rewire my muscle memory that I had to install Tampermonkey and write this script to restore it to how it was:
http://pastebin.com/wZKjNi1S

I hope they change it back. It doesn't even scan well any more, you have to take your eyes off of the summary text, pan all the way to the right to figure out how much discussion there's been on an article.

Source at http://pastebin.com/wZKjNi1S If you're sick of the share button ruining the Slashdot experience, install the Tampermonkey extension and paste the code below into a Tampermonkey script to restore comments link

-----
// ==UserScript==
// @name Slashdot fixer
// @namespace http://your.homepage/
// @version 0.1
// @description Restores the comments link, removes the share button
// @author The Greater Good
// @match http://slashdot.org/
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==

var $ = window.jQuery;

$(function(){
$('article').each(function(){
var comments = $(this).find('.comment-bubble a').text();
var url = $(this).find('.comment-bubble a').attr('href');
var snip = '<a href="' + url + '#comments" class="read-more" title=""><span>Read the </span><strong class="comments">' + comments + '</strong> <span>comments</span> ';

$(this).find('footer div.popularity').html(snip);
$(this).find('footer div.popularity').removeClass('popularity');
});
});