> I couldn’t disagree more with this characterisation. Part of the reason that sites like Reddit and HN are preferred to traditional fora (which have their own

> I couldn’t disagree more with this characterisation. Part of the reason that sites like Reddit and HN are preferred to traditional fora (which have their own engagement mechanisms) is because it's possible to have a different set of discussions on a topic. Preferred by whom, and in what contexts? The Reddit/HN threaded comment styles work well in scenarios that are relatively high-traffic, ephemeral, and mostly anonymous, in the sense that you generally don't notice or care about the username of people with whom you're having a conversation. You're right that it makes it easier to comprehend because you can just read from the parent downwards to get the full context, and that's rarely going to get to double digits. But this has a lot of drawbacks. It's a method of communication that's built for a burst of posts on a topic for a day or so, then effectively archived as people move onto the next topic. This doesn't mean that users prefer this method of communication universally, though. Even though forums are dying, Discord continues to grow and offer smaller communities that actually have a "community" aspect to them. Depends on the server, but I pretty much never see extensive use of threads in Discord, if at all; most people are happy to have a constant flow of conversation in one of the channels. It's closer to how people have conversations in person.