Putting aside threading, the voting is probably as damaging to discussion as anything else, given that it re-orders the discussion. Good luck posting a reply to the fifth top level reply by votes and having anyone see it… ever.
I’m just wondering why this can’t be resolved by enabling multilevel threading but having the comment order just default to chronological (sort by new). Wouldn’t this help counteract the damage that’s done by voting?
I’m really confused by the vigorous opposition to threaded comments on discourse. It’s like I’m just showing up to the discussion and not yet aware that threaded discussions murdered a baby or something. What’s the big deal?
For me, it makes returning to some piece of information or topic much easier. I can sift through comments to find the part of relevance to my interest.
Of course if I’m lovin the discussion, I’ll read every bit of it but generally I’m very overwhelmed with the flat discussion threads on discourse. It’s really stressful trying to have a discussion with people and understand where their comment lies in the grand scheme of the thread.
It just feels like a way more organized layout for discussion when I can minimize (easily, I don’t think there is an intuitive way to minimize responses that I don’t care about re-reading because they offer no value to the discussion in my opinion and i’m just trying to focus on someone else’s reply) a comment and move on to the next one and skip any replies to the minimized comment because it wasn’t really related to why I clicked on the thread.