Recently active topics in Get Satisfaction tagged with replies

Howdy, folks!

I thought I'd share the cognitive dissonance I find I'm experiencing pretty consistently when it comes to replying...

* First, I'm never sure whether I should be replying to a topic, replying to a reply, commenting on a reply, commenting on a comment. I find the bifurcation truly mind-boggling, I'm afraid.

* Because of the outdentation (it's a word — it is now, at least ;-) of the "Add a comment", I'm never sure (when I finally do decide on whether to reply or comment), what I'm commenting on: the reply or another comment.

* Because the "Add a comment" link appears above the comment-thread, I keep having to look for it when reading a string of comments and not finding it at the bottom.

* The overall ordering and indentation really chops up the conversation such that I have to do a lot more mental assemblage to discern who is replying to or commenting on whose reply or comment.

* I often start with a comment and realize I am going to need a little more room (and that this really should be a reply — perhaps??) and then have to copy and paste my comment thus far into a reply textarea and go from there. When the opposite occurs and I end up just saying "Cool!", I never bother downgrading this reply to comment status (even though I should??).

I can't help but feeling that this would best be cleared up by:

* Threading the topic (bonus points for show/hide thread/responses link).

* Adding a "Reply [to this reply]" ([] bits optional) directly (not in- or out-dented) under each reply.

* Adding an "Add to this topic" for those times when you have something to add that's not a reply to any one reply in particular.

* Doing away with comments altogether. If there's a need for responding directly to a reply, you should be able to reply to it in a threaded manner. If the aim is to allow for quick responses to posts, rather than split things based on length of response (and size of textarea), why not icons like: thumbs up/down, smiley/frowney, star, etc...?

I appreciate all you're making available to us — and am more than thrilled that I don't have to build it myself in addition to my products — but I think before much more is added, there needs to be some taking away. (And of course I'm not talking about a redesign effort: some subtle folding and merging would do the trick.)

Thanks again for always listening to and accommodating the sheer volume of us you do.

—Rael