hey, can we hold off on eradicating the comments and get a little more discussion on this before we ? is there anyone else who uses RSS feeds who would prefer that we do things in some sort of collapsible-post form like Kristi's suggested? I, personally, have a few concerns about useful stuff (and I'll just be honest, stuff that I like about the current setup!) that I would like to see implemented in whatever the new setup is...and these would certainly be blown away in the elimination of the comment function.
so let me tell you what I'm concerned about. having a single post acting as a kind of "heading" under which others can post their own responses to the topic addressed, the questions raised, etc. has clear organizational advantages for the conversation. it gives structure to the dialogue, you know? focus.
basically, it allows a lot of different conversations to go on at once, in a way that's easier to navigate than a massive unsorted bunch of "re:" posts, all arranged in reverse chronological order so that the original posts are at the bottom. I could also see the opposite problem occurring: I mean, when Kristi asks us to "bring the convo to the main page," my first response is "which one?" we have a variety of discussions going on here, and it seems to me like if comments bit the dust, we might well have ourselves a single chain of posts, not really going in a particular direction or sure of what points it wishes to address, and perhaps with random abrupt subject shifts. of course, this is from the guy who transferred out of SJC pretty much because seminars and classes suffered from the same problem of going in one meandering, directionless, quasi-linear path.
so what do other people think? is the convenience of an RSS feed outweighed by the convenience of the comment format? is there a way to have both? let's have some discussion about discussion! let's get recursive.
but not too recursive. our resident Talamini can warn you about the dangers of that.