To me, this is not really a conversational arena. An effort to post a comment floats somewhere between editing a wiki page and adding margin comments while revi

To me, this is not really a conversational arena. An effort to post a comment floats somewhere between editing a wiki page and adding margin comments while reviewing a manuscript. The tree of comments provides hook points for tangential observations or counterpoints. I am more often thinking of the silent readers than the parent comment author when I post a reply. If I notice a reply to my comments, I don't feel compelled to respond by conversational norms. I am more likely to reply if I see evidence that my original comment has failed to communicate my thoughts, and less likely to reply if I think I was understood but merely have disagreement. As a reader, I also get more out of the interesting alternate viewpoints that I see from people using the site in a similar manner. I don't tend to want to read comment chains that look like a transcribed conversation between only a few people.