I'll start this post with a disclaimer. This project has not produced conclusive results. But I'm optimistic! In fact, I've got a couple hurdles that maybe some of the people reading this can help with (which is what I'm hoping for).
So let me describe what I have been working on. This is a python tool with two modes of operation. The first mode of operation looks at a single reddit post, and gathers statistics about the first 5 users to comment. This includes the user karma (average), account age (average), number of interactions on the subreddit (average), and number of interactions with other commenters in the thread (max, avg max, and average).