The top of a hypertree should not be the most abstract view, but the most concentrated.
Another, related use for hypertext is to allow documents to be convenient and comprehensible to both beginners and experts in some field. One strategy for doing this is to offer the expert version as the primary page, with links to clarifications of difficult points. ("If this didn't make sense to you, click here..." ;^/ Alternately, the primary version could be the simplified one, with a second, expert version existing as a parallel branch.
Another use is to try to involve the reader more deeply in a story by offering different storylines the reader can select. This genre has its own design conventions, as in this HTML-ized version of a story by Kibo and this cgi version of the original Colossal Cave adventure. And a gorgeous variant by Queneau (Germany). Here's also a discussion of the theory of this sort of Interactive Fiction (IF). And another by Gareth Rees that covers the same ground with nicer examples, and a good bibliography with live links, at the end. And a rant about Michael Joyce's "Afternoon".
Yet another use for hypertext is to allow parallel reading of two texts, especially a 'classic' alongside a commentary or a set of annotations. < Henry Churchyard's edition of Jane Austen > and mine of a sample paragraph of Finnegans Wake are two examples.
I think this problem requires the most delicate attack, because the text being annotated will be trying to establish its own continuity and rhythms, and peripheral material is bound to disrupt these. Hypertexting will actually exaggerate this problem because it relinquishes control over the reading-sequence, and in my Finnegans Wake demo I'm trying to minimize this by substituting 'in-line' commentary rather than linking it externally...
Yet another use of hypertext is to add a dramatic element of suspense. This book ad does a nice job of this.
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