this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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22
When responding to a comment with multiple points, should one create a new thread (new comment) for each point, or should one make a single large comment containing individual responses to all points? (self.general)
submitted 2 months ago by Kalcifer to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I encounter situations like this rather often where I am responding to a comment that contains many individual points/statements. I typically will respond with a single comment that contains a quote of each point that is being responded to with my response under neath the respective quote — and, sometimes, for added clarity, a horizontal line separating each response. For example:

Statement 1

My response to Statement 1

Statement 2

My response to Statement 2

etc.

I wonder if it would be better practice to have atomic responses to comments — create a single comment for each individual statement, i.e. spawn a new thread for each new atomic topic. This would allow scores to be representative of each specific response rather than an average of the total, and it may also help with clarity when reading through the comment section, as well as easing the creation of responses (not needing to rely on formatting so much). For example

Comment 1 in reply to comment with multiple points:

Statement 1.

My response to Statement 1.

Comment 2 in reply to the comment with multiple points:

Statement 2.

My response to Statement 2.

etc.

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[–] Kalcifer 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Making multiple replies to the same thing is considered rude and spammy.

I'm just wondering if it's a practice/belief that should be continued. Perhaps multiple replies is actually a better way to do it, regardless of how it is currently interpreted.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't like the multiple comment idea.

If the conversation is at the point where you are replying to replies, and you've sent me three rebuttals with each of them asking for clarification or verification from me, I'm now sending 3-6 replies back, which may require you to send 12 or more.

Also, I'd lose track of who said what and would end up referencing something from a conversation with someone else.

[–] Kalcifer 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If the conversation is at the point where you are replying to replies, and you’ve sent me three rebuttals with each of them asking for clarification or verification from me, I’m now sending 3-6 replies back, which may require you to send 12 or more.

You are right that the amount of comments would grow rather quickly (exponentially, I think), but the threads, themselves, should be easier to follow — there wouldn't be multiple conversations happening within each comment.

I’d lose track of who said what and would end up referencing something from a conversation with someone else.

How come? The comments are all visually tied together in the thread hierarchy (well, assuming that one isn't reading Lemmy content from Mastodon, or with the Chat mode in the Lemmy UI)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I never look at the threads. I get a notification on my phone that somebody responded. I read the response, I reply to it if necessary. I'm not opening up the entire thread and reading through a conversation from the beginning again.

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If this is in reply to the second quote, then I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make. You appear to be opposed to atomic comments because you don't want to scroll for context, but the alternative, which I outlined, is a comment containing quotes for context — and to solve what you are describing, you would require the entire thread to be contained within the comment, which would still require scrolling. Neither option really addresses your complaint. Imo, atomic comments come the closest, as the scope is kept restricted per thread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The point is, replying in individual comments is stupid and more confusing. You seem to be trying to defend the idea, but no matter how much you think it makes sense, I would quit this platform in a heartbeat if everyone typed that way.

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

replying in individual comments is stupid and more confusing.

For clarity, would you mind explicitly stating why you believe that atomic comments are intrinsically more confusing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've already told you how I interact with the site, and that might not be the same way as you.

I'm sure atomic comments make perfect sense to you. I'm also sure, that they make no sense to me. I can be right without making you wrong.

If you can't understand that different people have different preferences, that's a much bigger problem than anything we can solve here.

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I apologize if I've offended you, as that wasn't my intention — I'm only trying to understand your opinion. I'm aware that we have different opinions, I'm just curious what your rationale is for yours.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't think so. It just clutters things up and makes referencing the points and counter-points later more difficult if they're all spread out in multiple replies instead of just 1.

[–] Kalcifer 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It just clutters things up

How so? Are you just referring to the sheer number of comments as being clutter? I would argue that it's cleaner as there is less of a need of large comments and extensive utilization of quotes. Ideally, one comment would receive one direct reply without any extra formatting.

It [...] makes referencing the points and counter-points later more difficult if they’re all spread out in multiple replies instead of just 1.

How so? Everything is still contained in a threaded hierarchy (assuming that one isn't using something like Mastodon, or Lemmy-UI's Chat feature in the comment section). If the comments are contained within scope/context, relevant information to the thread shouldn't be spread out. The relevant information should be contained within the path of the n-ary tree.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You could have support for this thing in the board's software, but I don't think it's common. So normally, where a post will have at least a header, sometimes also a footer, multiple posts means duplicated data on screen. Pretty minor though.

I think it fragments the workflow a bit because normally you can just quote a block and easily interject your replies + add more quote syntax. If it were multiple posts you'd need to repeat certain steps each time. Personally I want to minimize switches between keyboard and mouse. On mobile it's more even.

I see both styles here and there. It might be too much if multiple posts were the norm but when it's occasional it really doesn't matter to me. I'd rather you do what feels natural.

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You could have support for this thing in the board’s software, but I don’t think it’s common. So normally, where a post will have at least a header, sometimes also a footer, multiple posts means duplicated data on screen. Pretty minor though.

Support for what? I'm not entirely sure what you are referring to with this section.

I think it fragments the workflow a bit because normally you can just quote a block and easily interject your replies + add more quote syntax. If it were multiple posts you’d need to repeat certain steps each time. Personally I want to minimize switches between keyboard and mouse. On mobile it’s more even.

That's a fair point. Replies do sometimes rely on fragments of information from the entire post, but, even still, one could still just contain that within an atomic reply, but yeah, it would need to be repeated for each part. Personally I'm not bothered by the increase in actions. Generally, one isn't commenting in a large enough volume for that sort of efficiency concern to really matter, imo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I meant that if someone made multiple replies within some time threshold, similar to how 'this post has been edited' works, the board could automatically join them into one post, maybe with a little indication that it's concatenated. You could even make it config option for users.

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 2 months ago

That's an interesting idea, but I feel that it overcomplicates things without much benefit.