I highly recommend AudioBookShelf . It's mostly geared towards audiobooks/podcasts, but it has a decent reader built into it. That being said, it's not without it's flaws, like some document file types aren't recognized, and not properly syncing progress occasionally.
Edit: I should mention it's actively being developed, devs are active on discord & GitHub, and it's getting better all the time.
~tilde has their comment section setup the same way, and I believe their reasoning is because it encourages you to read the existing comments.
Not sure if @ernest has the same intentions or if it was just a stylistic choice.
Personally, I like that it's on the bottom of the threads.