Ah. I meant more that if I was a troll and I had the ability to comment privately, I could say nasty things to you in my private comment and nobody else would b

Ah. I meant more that if I was a troll and I had the ability to comment privately, I could say nasty things to you in my private comment and nobody else would be able to see them (except admins, I suppose, who would quickly become overloaded). It's a good point that I could email feedback privately. I think that would be a difficult thing to establish in the general case because it's not expected behaviour, which makes it seem more significant (oh my god, this guy disliked my comment so much that he decided to email me about it?). It would also be more effort, and some people (especially newbies, I would think), don't include contact details in their profile. By disrupting public commentary I mean that the established norm on HN is that, mostly, if you have something to say you say it to the group. If it was possible to comment privately perhaps it would detract from that group discussion because people are shy or would rather their comment not be subject to scrutiny. The end result could be a tragic migration of the interesting conversations in HN comments from public to private. That's the "shadow discussion" problem I mentioned later. That's the particular reason I suggested making private comments impossible to reply to, so they don't become an alternate competing venue for discussion. I think the recipient being able to make the comment public would also help act as a balance against shy commenters making perfectly good public comments private.