Colin Walker

When writing about ownership I explored the difference between comments and replies and that part of it was context.

I started thinking about that again but in a wider sense.

I've never really liked that Medium turned all replies into full posts so that they showed as standalone items in your feed.

It didn't matter if it was an essay length response or just a quick one-liner; they all became "posts" in their own right.

Wrong!

But, thinking about it, this is what's mirrored, and encouraged, by the #indieweb where a reply is designed to be written on your own site and replicated as a comment on the original via a webmention. Regardless of length.

I can't complain about one but countenance the other.

"There are different types of reply and they should be treated accordingly."

There has to be a line, a point where a comment is just that and not a reply. It's a question of semantics but not everyone's answer to "what is a comment and where does it belong?" will be the same.

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  1. manton says: #
    @colinwalker This is why Micro.blog treats replies and posts differently. The distinction isn’t always clear, though, and more control is needed in the future since some users may not want the default behavior.
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  6. canion says: #
    @colinwalker I’m new to Micro.blog but I’m baffled by comments, and how to get somebody’s attention via a mention that is not a comment. I’m not even sure I’ve set up my WordPress correctly to support them.
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  7. colinwalker says: #
    @canion From what I understand direct replies should be fine no matter what but @ mentions not replies need the name at the start. If you are trying to @ mention someone from something posted directly to WP rather than via the app I’m pretty sure it won’t work.
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  8. colinwalker says: #
    @canion There is limited support for sending webmentions from WordPress to m.b hosted blogs when you link to a post. You need the indieweb Webmention plugin installed to send/receive webmentions. Displaying them nicely on your blog, however, can be messy.
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