reply-chain

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


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


 * 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).


 * 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

 * 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, proposed a mechanism for propagating a reply-to-a-reply upstream, back to the original post.

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.

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) twitter-reply-cluster.jpg

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