DavidSklar I would be interested in knowing how "keep replies with origpost" caused confusion.
I don't enjoy reading a discussion in a threaded display, because posts are sorted along a time axis only within a particular thread. Once I have finished a thread, I have to wonder, which information is the basis of the next reply.
Let me give you an example:
- Original post
- First reply
- Third reply
- Sixth reply
After finishing reading the first thread (posts 1, 2, 4 and 5) I arrive at the third reply. First I wonder, because the writer seems totally unaware of what has been written "before" in the forth and fifth reply, until I realise, that these other two were actually written after the third reply. Furthermore, I will never know, whether the seventh reply reflects only the third reply or also replies 1, 2, 4 and 5.
These kinds of discussions tend to accumulate very similar answers again and again, because people reply after having read only the original post or only parts of the discussion. It's not one discussion, it's more like many independant mini discussions where people don't care what was written in other threads. For me, it often feels like wasted time, especially when I find out later, that my answer was already given by someone else, just in another thread I wasn't aware of yet.
In a technical forum, where different aspects of a problem can be separated into different threads, this may be helpful, even considering the disadvantages I've mentioned before. In forums where people discuss political questions or help each other with questions of their social life, partnership or personal problems, I think it's more helpful to assume, that people have read all the already given answers before they write their own reply.
Having said that, I sometimes think that even in the latter case short notes to replies (one level deep) could be helpful like the "Likes" we can give here, but these should not be made to initiate their own discussions, distracting from the main discussion.
