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One can reduce the problem by always including the parent, but that is often too much or too little context. For a stream of omments to be worth reading really requires some indication of what older comments are necessary to understand any given comment and probably some changes in the habits of comment writers.

And yeah, the inability to make views worth reading of comments by selected authors makes me try to stay away from trees of comments like we see on reddit and HN. (HN however has other things going for it though that offset my dislike of trees of comments.)