Eternal comments might actually be a pretty bad design pattern. Humans forget things that other humans say in face to face conversations. By conversing naturall

Eternal comments might actually be a pretty bad design pattern. Humans forget things that other humans say in face to face conversations. By conversing naturally with each other over a casual electronic medium, our brains might be tricked into believing they're in a similar context, when in reality they're in a context where one unrecoverable slip of the fingers could cost them their job, earn them infamy for the rest of their lives, etc. See also the right to be forgotten. The immutability of comments also imposes a chilling effect on controversial or unconventional speech (if it doesn't go down well with the masses, you'll be paying for it forever). When they can't be deleted, immutable electronic comments eventually become more important than face to face conversations simply because most of the latter get forgotten. I'd argue isn't a trend we want to encourage (unless you own a forum and want to feed Googlebot and slap ads on more things, of course).