@mathew wrote:
Probably true. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen a side thread in this system. I assume they get shown some way in the original thread that spawned them, right?
If it's true that readers don't generally follow the off-topic threads, then I think it would probably be a good feature if a comment could be flagged as off-topic, but left intact in its parent thread -- but if anyone else wanted to follow that off-topic thread, the system would then split off a new discussion and move the original comment and reply there. That way you could avoid lots of dead single-post discussions.