reply-chain

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A reply chain (AKA reply thread) is a list of replies, and replies to those replies, displayed under the original post.

Indieweb Examples

Ashton McAllan

• 2015-05-?? began re-sending webmentions for a post when it receives a comment.

Kyle Mahan

• 2015-06-09 supporting downstream comments
  • Red Wind re-sends webmentions for a post when it receives a comment.
  • also parses "p-comment" on incoming replies and interprets them as downstream replies (they look just like first-order replies in my UI).

Ben Roberts

• 2015-10-16 supporting reading and display of downstream comments but intentionally only goes one level down.
  • https://ben.thatmustbe.me/note/2014/4/24/1/_

Chris Aldrich

• Chris Aldrich makes clever use of permalink URLs with fragments to thread conversations between Twitter and WordPress: https://boffosocko.com/2018/07/02/threaded-conversations-between-wordpress-and-twitter/
• He does something similar for other platforms which support Webmention

Why

• ... to see all replies

Markup

How to markup a reply chain:

• ... still under study ... feel free to add suggestions ...

Receiving downstream comments

On 2015-02-19, Ashton McAllan proposed a mechanism for propagating a reply-to-a-reply upstream, back to the original post[1].

The mechanism works like this:

1. Aaron writes a note
2. Barnaby replies to the note and sends a webmention to Aaron
3. Aaron parses the reply, and adds it as a comment on his note
4. Crystal replies to Barnaby's reply, sends a webmention to Barnaby
5. Barnaby parses Crystal's reply, adds it as a comment on his reply
6. Since Barnaby's post is itself a reply, he in turn sends a webmention to Aaron's original post, letting him know the reply has updated.
7. Aaron checks Barnaby's reply for updates as usual, and sees that Barnaby's reply now has a comment
8. Aaron parses the comment and interprets it as a 2nd level comment on the original post.

Silo Examples

Twitter

• An example of reply chaining on Twitter: https://twitter.com/benwerd/status/490958867803537408
• Twitter also clusters related replies together in its visual design from https://twitter.com/craigmod/status/623506782267305984 (Screenshot on 2015-07-21)

Other Examples

• Visualization of threaded discussions from May-Li Khoe's master's thesis:

FOSS

• Debiki uses a unique 2D scrolling view: http://www.debiki.com/demo/-71cs1/demo-page-1

See Also

• reply
• recursive reply-contexts
• comment
• comment-propagation
• https://petermolnar.net/nested-comments-are-bad/
• Salmention / Salmon
• tweetstorm
• https://treeverse.app/, a reply thread tool/browser extension for visualizing branching conversations on Twitter
• https://blog.grotenhuis.info/2023/01/25/if-you-feel.html
  • "If you feel like writing a thread, ask if yourself if it should be a blogpost, instead.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    ✴️ Also on Micro.blog
    ✍️ Reply by email" January 25, 2023