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I imagine it’s unreplyable to prevent hijacking - we all think we have something important to say, so there’s a temptation to put it as an unrelated reply to a top comment so more eyeballs see our comment. You’d want this in place regardless of whether the link is organically voted up or artificially pushed to the top for convenience.

I could see how they float to the top organically, so it might be just the unreplyable aspect that is automated?

I guess comments consisting only of a link are automatically set to be unreplyable? The posting and the floating to the top is just the normal posting and voting system, it seems to me.

Hmm no, some link-only comments are replyable, so archive links must be handled specially.