Threaded comments have advantages but they also have disadvantages. I won’t mention the disadvantages because if you don’t know what they are already than they aren’t disadvantages to you. The advantages are: 1) You can keep track of a sub-conversation in a comments stream; 2) You can refer to a specific upstream comment easily (which in non-threaded contexts often uses a reference to a comment number, which has the disadvanage of not being fixed if old moderated comments are inserted prior to the numbered comment); and 3) at least in some cases, you can subscribe to a specific comment (like on you just made) to see only responses to it and not to the entire comment stream.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that we can have our cake and eat it too.<\/p>\n
What is needed is a convention by which a comment can be linked to a prior comment. So, when you are making the comment. This can be done in several ways, including:<\/p>\n
1) You hit “reply to comment” on the comment to which you are replying, and you make your comment. However, visually, your comment will not be threaded under that comment … it will just go at the end of the comment stream as the most recent comment. However, it will have a header that indicates what comment it refers to and you can click that to go right back to it.<\/p>\n
2) You simply use a particular bit of text using as standard format referring to the number of a numbered comment. Like [123] for comment 123. Later, if the comments are renumbered that reference gets changed appropriately (or changed to a [comment removed] if it is removed. This code also supplies the data for the linked comment navigation referred to already in 1) above.<\/p>\n
3) Some kind of menu that lets you access a list of prior comments.<\/p>\n
This would prompt a comment navigation system which would have the following features:<\/p>\n
1) User can fold the comments into threaded form or unfold them into sequential form;<\/p>\n
2) User can find a link to the next sub comment at the bottom of any comment to which a referal was made, and follow through all the threads this way, using a simple visual navigation system;<\/p>\n
3) Since this will get confusing no matter what, the user can mark a comment “read” and thus, later on, look at the comments that are not read in any of the available layouts; and<\/p>\n
4) The user can see a visual tree of all comments with the usual annoying ballons popping up out of nodes on the tree.<\/p>\n
OK, WordPress coders, let’s see what you can do!<\/p>\n
See more Needed Software here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Threaded comments have advantages but they also have disadvantages. I won’t mention the disadvantages because if you don’t know what they are already than they aren’t disadvantages to you. The advantages are: 1) You can keep track of a sub-conversation in a comments stream; 2) You can refer to a specific upstream comment easily (which … Continue reading Software Needed: WordPress Linked Comments Plugin<\/span>