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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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[–] [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.