Sorry I didn’t mean to be rude, I didn’t realize you were the author of the new commenting system.
Its pretty amazing in a lot of ways, but the absence of threading makes it really really hard to digest the conversation. Have you considered an option to show replies inline? Could be a button at the top or something? I know we can currently click the “reply” button below a comment, but a) that’s a lot of extra work when you’re reading a busy topic, and b) you still see those replies farther down, which totally throws off the narrative (and the beauty of BoingBoing comments is that you really do get a narrative).
Compare the thread on your awesome keyboard to any old Disqus thread. Note how much easier the narrative is to follow when you can clearly see replies, and the replies to the replies, etc.
Personally I don’t think you’re right about having fewer comments because of the Disqus logins being persistent across multiple websites. For my part I think the login system was the clunkiest part of Disqus, it would always log me out and would have trouble logging me back in.
And while I have your ear, its really confusing to see commenting history now. When you click a user it shows not only their comments but all the replies, which is completely unnecessary in my opinion and makes it impossible to follow. If we want to see replies we can always go to their comment by clicking on it.
And one more point: when I’ve expanded the replies, I can’t then reply to those, or “like” them. That makes participation really difficult.
I mean all the above constructively of course. This system is a super human feat and works beautifully, it just has a few very fixable usability issues.
