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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]

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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] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The format on here isn't really suited to multiple responses, imo, but you should look at a website called Kialo. I haven't used it in years and I don't know if it's active but it's an interesting concept based very much on that idea, with the aim of making discussions more formal and rigorous.

Here's an example of what it looks like, for the discussion topic Should American Football Be Banned?

The first circle shows top level positions that one might take, one of which I've selected, suggesting it should be reformed rather than banned. Coming out from that are points in favor or against, like, "It is not possible to reform American football to make it safe enough to play," and then from that point there's more points, one saying that risk of brain injury is unavoidable and another pointing out health risks that could be addressed, like heat illness.

spoiler It's also possible to view the discussion in a different format, like so:

:::

Clicking on any of those points will let you see the replies.

New comments have to be approved and they have to be meaningfully different from things that have already been posted, and they're supposed to be limited to a single point.

And you can comment on points suggesting clarification

It's a pretty different format and vibe compared to what we have here, but even if it's not something you're into, I think it's an interesting little experiment. Imo, you would need something formatted that way for the multiple comment approach to work well and be readable.

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 2 months ago

you should look at a website called Kialo. I haven’t used it in years and I don’t know if it’s active but it’s an interesting concept based very much on that idea

Ah yeah, I've heard of that site. It definitely seems interesting, but I'm not too keen on getting invested in another centralized/non-fediverse service.

New comments have to be approved

Hrm, this feels like it has immense potential for administrative abuse.

I can definitely see the service's potential, but I would like to see something like it that can connect with the Fediverse.