When there are many comments to a question and they get to be almost a mini-thread it might help to have an enumeration system. So you could respond to comment say 15 when you are at say 42. Not a major issue though as usually there are few comments.
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4$\begingroup$ If this were to made sense, it ought to be done by the software. $\endgroup$– Mariano Suárez-Álvarez ModCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 17:22
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$\begingroup$ @MarianoSuárez-Alvarez Yes, that is what I meant. So it is a feature request. One problem is that comments may be edited, which creates a version number. For Answers editing makes location of answer to become different than the original but for comments I think their display is fixed unless deleted. $\endgroup$– MaesumiCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 17:39
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3$\begingroup$ This sounds as if we'd be making each comment thread more like chat, where each comment can refer back to a previous comment. Currently, the Q&A comment renderer seems to be similar to the chat comment renderer, so perhaps this is possible. However the question is: do we want to make Q&A comment threads into chats? I have seen some Q&A comment threads that have gotten ridiculously long. I would worry that this feature might promote long comment threads. $\endgroup$– robjohn ModCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 18:00
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$\begingroup$ Aside from my aforementioned worries, this would make it easier to tell which comment one is replying to, without having to quote part of the previous comment. This might reduce confusion and keep the comment threads from getting long simply due to confusion. $\endgroup$– robjohn ModCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 18:03
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$\begingroup$ @robjohn I see your point. So I 'sort of' withdraw my suggestion! I have noticed that the software itself discourages a back-and-forth type of chat in the comment area. $\endgroup$– MaesumiCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 18:05
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2$\begingroup$ You can refer to a specific comment by adding a link to that comment. See How to link to a comment? and How to format links in comments. $\endgroup$– Martin SleziakCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 19:10
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1$\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak Thanks. There are always nooks and crannies for me to discover here. However there is something to be said for a third person to be able to visually link two comments without actually going off comment page. $\endgroup$– MaesumiCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 19:38
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$\begingroup$ And next someone will propose threading and we'll reinvent USENET :-) $\endgroup$– Mariano Suárez-Álvarez ModCommented Jan 12, 2013 at 21:44
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$\begingroup$ @Mariano: Despite having online access at the days of USENET, I never really used it. And now it's dead. Perhaps like the 19th century saw the neo-gothic and neo-classical; maybe we can see the neo-usenet era! $\endgroup$– Asaf Karagila ModCommented Jan 13, 2013 at 1:38
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1 Answer
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The comment section has never been intended for extended discussions. If you find yourself in a situation where you need complicated systems to keep track of the discussion, you should have it in chat instead. (You can even create chatrooms to address a specific question/post!) (In fact, for long comment threads the software will nag you to "let us continue this discussion in chat".)
For all else Martin's suggestion should be more than sufficient.
answered Jan 14, 2013 at 12:14