Proposal: Comments under articles

Status: Open.

Pull requests: None yet.

What changes

• A Comments (n) button at the bottom of every article and policy page. Clicking it opens the discussion in place, under the article; the number counts all comments and replies.
• Comments are threaded: you reply to a specific comment, and replies are indented under it, a few levels deep, with a link to the full discussion page for longer threads.
• Votes: signed-in contributors can vote comments up or down, and sort by best or newest.
• Each comment shows which version of the page it was written about.
• The full discussion keeps its own page, linked from the article.

Why

Discussing a page today means leaving it for the forum. Opening the discussion in place, with replies kept together and the most useful comments first, makes it easier to read and to take part.

How it works

• Each new top-level comment starts a thread in the forum's Articles section for that page, so the forum keeps working as today and shows the same discussions.
• Replies are attached to the comment they answer.
• Comments load only when someone opens them, so pages stay as fast as today.

Technical notes

Forum comments get a link to the comment they reply to, and a new table records one vote per person and comment.