Bleh

But to whom does it reply?

Top dude. Okay I guess.

Yes, in order to linearize discussions. You can go off on tangents if you want by using the other reply buttons.

This whole page is pretty tangential at this point.

The way the tangents get formatted is still confusing me a little. I get what it's trying to do, but here for instance, I read some trolling by Human then suddenly ran into this discussion.

This is not a complaint - it's new so I'm still getting used to it. The "parent" button is kind of useful, although a "Now take me back to where I just was" button would be useful after you've clicked it.

I have a feeling, though, that it would lead to some horrible spaghetti on complex talk pages: at the moment we usually just reply at the end of each topic but this will make it much easier to reply anywhere.

When this first appeared I had four problems:

• Looks - it's looking much better now; thanks, Nx.
• Size - still a bit tall, but I suppose that helps make things clearer. I'll probably get used to it.
• Speed - much better now; thanks, Nx.
• Confusion - I'll probably get used to it.

In other words, I'm about 90% convinced this is a good idea and will work.

Thanks for all your feedback, your comments helped highlight specific problems that Nx was able to work on. Especially that slow loading problem, that would be problem with ever implementation of this.

I've just spotted the "parent" button. It's useful for navigation, but I'm not sure "parent" is the right word. We seem to have plenty of words for what the post is, but few for the ones it's responding to. Respondee?

I think this is an issue of programmer-speak not translating well. If you have a better suggestion, you can find the relevant messages using Special:Allmessages ("parent" is used in a couple more places).

I think it's doubly lost in translation because I was assuming it was jargon and was assuming it was being used as a verb; i.e., "click here to parent this comment to another"... d'oh.

"although a "Now take me back to where I just was" button would be useful after you've clicked it."

Such a button already exists. It's your browser's back button :)

As for the spaghetti, I agree about that. There are two solutions: Move that subthread out into its own thread, and the collapse button, which I've hidden for now because it was fugly and was taking up too much space.

Ah. Good point. Hadn't thought of that.