Ah I got you. I have considered this multiple times, but a flat system still appears better for me. Yes, it is a very important issue and I will try to come up with a better solution, probably hybrid.
Something I like is the idea of "forking" topics, conversations evolve and if a new comment thread becomes over a few replies there's generally a good chance it has become its own conversation which can then involve into another conversation etc etc etc.
If I was trying to keep the system as "flat" as possible I would consider deciding on an arbitrary cut off point (total replies, or total "levels" of replies) that automatically forks a thread into a new topic and then in the original topic would display in a similar style to a comment but with "this comment has generated a new topic, 2 replies... load preview / go to topic")
not sure if that's explained well enough, but I think that would solve the problem.
That's a great idea. Maybe it needs good auto-categorization to implement well, but another idea is to not bother with the thresholds at all -- every comment can potentially spawn off a new wave of replies, so why not just fork into separate threads immediately? The top level view gives you the flat view of the top level thread, and by diving in through the replies you can keep flat views of each sub-conversation. If every comment is treated the same, then it truly doesn't matter how old the comment you're replying to is because you could be sparking an entirely new discussion.
