Of the people that you communicate with on Slack, messenger, iMessage, and Hangouts, how many have you not met in person? I would guess very few. Even if you talk to coworkers on Slack that you have never met in person, you have an ongoing relationship with them.
Comment threads are public discourse, mostly between strangers. You may think that you view everyone you talk to online as human, but you don't. No one does. You can't read a thread with tens or hundreds of participants and consider the nature of their existence.
My opinion (for now) is that there are problematic issues with comments. The discussion we are having right now, though both of us have made it slightly uncivil at times, is interesting to me, and I've learned something from it, so, hey, I guess I'm not against them. However, more often than not, I regret participation.
Of the people that you communicate with on Slack, messenger, iMessage, and Hangouts, how many have you not met in person? I would guess very few. Even if you talk to coworkers on Slack that you have never met in person, you have an ongoing relationship with them.
Comment threads are public discourse, mostly between strangers. You may think that you view everyone you talk to online as human, but you don't. No one does. You can't read a thread with tens or hundreds of participants and consider the nature of their existence.
My opinion (for now) is that there are problematic issues with comments. The discussion we are having right now, though both of us have made it slightly uncivil at times, is interesting to me, and I've learned something from it, so, hey, I guess I'm not against them. However, more often than not, I regret participation.