my mates say they are highly confused that "place a comment" and "read comments" are two different links and two different functions. they want it to work like henso.com and all the other weblogs. i mentioned this behaviour months ago and i got used to it, but apparently this is a serious problem to some.

i think all it needs is a different reply form macro. instead of redirecting the non-member it should simply write a link to to the login page. in doing so the functions of story.main and story.comment can be merged into one script. moreover, what do you think about ditching the two-level discussion in favour of a flat one?

i'm a bit confused ... the story-macro "commentform" either renders the form to add a comment or renders a link to the login-page, so if you want it to work like henso.com you can do that: remove the links to "comment" in preview and display-skin of story, and add the macro "commentform" (with optional parameter "text") at the bottom of the fullstory-skin. and if you remove the "reply to this comment!"-link, you get the same flat structure as seen on henso.com ... or did i get you wrong?

I think there are some minor issues with nested comments and comments in general regarding usability.

One is that the link to add a comment to an existing thread is not where you'd expect it - at the end of the thread - but right after the original story or the top-level comment. I'm not sure this is necessitated by the skin structure (I used to think so, but I just checked and it doesn't seem to be after all).

One other thing which is really more about taste than usability is the, well, let's call it verbosity of comment headers. While for stories the header just consists of

(name), (date)

top level comments have

on (date), (name) posted:

and for nested comments:

on (date), (name) answered:

I don't think this is really necessary since the comment role is evident from the layout. What about just using the same (name), (date) header for all stories and comments?