[Alex3917]

If conversations aren't nested, how are you supposed to know what the replies are referencing? There's no effective way to talk to each other and have a real discussion.

All of the 'problems' of nested comments are trivial in comparison to that. There are certainly good use cases for flat comments, and I think Stack Overflow is a good example, but there is a reason why all of the biggest discussion sites use nested comments. There might be more sites with flat comments overall, but that's only because they're much easier to implement.

[HeyImAlex]

Massive quote trees (or, if you're considerate, a truncated quote tree) are pretty much the norm for old school forums. Sites like 4chan use links. Say what you want, but humans haven't really had a problem projecting threaded discussion onto flat forums since forever.

[munchor]

Indeed, 4chan's way of handling this is pretty good, too bad Jeff didn't refer it.

[prawn]

How do you have a real discussion in real life when the discussion is effectively flat? You let a 'branch' peter out, then re-raise a previous point for response.

[damncabbage]

But it also gets frustrating. Conversations can go in many very interesting directions, but you can't, and you often end up railroaded down one path with the others mostly forgotten as you come across more branching points in the discussion. It feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where you only get to read it once.

With HN, Reddit, Usenet, or whatever, you can keep that line of discussion going at whatever speed you want.

[hmbg]

I very rarely have rewarding real-life discussions involving more than 50 people. Online I've found tools that make this possible. Like threading.