my reasoning

I voted for the comment viewing system because it's the thing that is most frustrating for me as I scour O-nerd. Especially in the long and involved conversations, if you reply to a comment that was made much earlier in the thread, it appears at the end of the thread away from the comment to which it is directly related. The preference to collapse all comments below a certain tier level helps some, but it would be nice if all comments were collapsible.

I realize that fully collapsible comments could result in an unacceptable server load (or some other issue), so maybe a solution could be worked out where the comments are only collapsible when it is necessary. Maybe an option to give the user manual control of the tier level that displays. That way someone happening upon a confusing or very branched thread could increase the displayed tiers one level at a time to better follow the conversation. They could read the first comment, click to open all of the second tier comments and read those, then click to the next tier, etc.

As this would only be necessary in particular conversations (like this one), maybe it would be an option that popped up on the comment screen when a certain number of comments was reached. This would be a good temporary solution, but it would be unnecessary in some cases (where there are lots of comments, but the progress linearly without branches). Maybe a more permanent solution would be an algorithm that was able to determine the complexity of the thread and pop up the option to make the page "collapsible" when a certain complexity is reached.

Of course, it would have to have a flippin sweet name, too. Perhaps the button could say "I'm Sablotroned" or "My face is melted," signifying the readers inability to follow all that is O-nerd...

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