Comment sections (whether silo or not) remain the worst possible place for multi-post replies. Full blog posts – including anything as small as 300 characters – are vastly superior as a form of reply for any conversation that is worth reading.
@simonwoods By "multi-post replies", do you mean a single person replying to themselves (à la Tweetstorm)?
@AngeloStavrow Yes exactly. I have yet to see this presented in a way that works well, whether from the viewpoint of the writer or reader.
@simonwoods While I agree, I have noticed one advantage: it makes it very easy (i.e., one-click) for a reader to comment on or call out a specific observation or question among multiple posts. I don't think that's worth the otherwise unpleasant reading experience, though.
@simonwoods Comments section is just not the right fit for that. I do feel though Medium and Twitter way of handling multi-posts and replies do work well.
@amit Oh no, not for me at all. Have you tried to read threaded tweets? Specifically the replies, not the ones that are purposefully constructed as an alternative blog post. Not only is the UI bad, along with limits on the API imposed by Twitter, but most people reply out of order, to the wrong thing, include the wrong people in the conversation... it's such a mess.
As for Medium. Well, I'd have a comment but the entire platform doesn't meet the requirements for basic reading. It's just like Facebook. Outside of individual pages (I don't use the term "URL" because that's one of the ugly things on Medium, to the point of being useless), it lacks too much basic functionality and respect for readers to come into my thinking with such issues anymore.
@simonwoods Sure, Twitter's not the best interface, but you can at least make some sense. It allows you to see all the posts one after another, you can selectively comment - so the context is not lost. Of course, it is not used in absolutely the best way.
And am with you, I do not like the platform either as a reader or writer. But at least it got the interface around commenting sorted out right from the first day.
@amit Yeah it is definitely still the standard bearer for micro-commenting, to some extent. Although I do wonder how well it can hold onto its place as more and more microblog alternatives are developed, with opinionated designs and intended for smaller groups of people.
@AngeloStavrow Yep, that's definitely the big strength that Twitter especially has held onto. Unfortunately I think people are unable to ingest other people's words in a manner befitting reasonable discourse most of the time, let alone remembering that when they access a commenting site that this intentional action (proper ingestion) is necessary to a better experience.