as far as I can figure, you'd have to deselect getting notifs when anyone responds to your entry in a community, because if that's how you're doing it it doesn't specify top level and will grab lower level comments.
Then every time you create an entry, you'd have to manually click the bell for tracking, choose 'more options', deselect getting notifs for when anyone responds to that entry (because it seems to automatically select that every single time you click the bell to start with), and choose the option where you only want a notif for a new top-level. To get it by e-mail may be a paid account option only, I'm not sure. But it should work otherwise. I've never needed to turn off notifs for comments in my own entries, I don't get that much threadhopping, but it works when I want notifications for new threads in an event log.
no subject
Then every time you create an entry, you'd have to manually click the bell for tracking, choose 'more options', deselect getting notifs for when anyone responds to that entry (because it seems to automatically select that every single time you click the bell to start with), and choose the option where you only want a notif for a new top-level. To get it by e-mail may be a paid account option only, I'm not sure. But it should work otherwise. I've never needed to turn off notifs for comments in my own entries, I don't get that much threadhopping, but it works when I want notifications for new threads in an event log.