[SW PSI TL;DR] About comments/replies/threads on SW.
Some users on here are mixing up terminologies. It's to be expected.
Yet to a new user on the site, that is unfamiliar on its operation, this mixing is confusing.
I'm making this post to clarify both the terminology, as well as to point out some of the features on this site.
The first order on the hierarchy is the post. A post is not a thread. Threads are second order under the posts.
On every post there comments and replies. Together they form threads...
So any given post can have multiple threads, which may have multiple replies. The very first message on the thread is a comment.
The comment may be visible or mention that it was deleted by either the author of the comment or the author of the post. The thread though still exists...
There is a third situation where a comment may say "This comment was deleted by its author". That situation is when that particular author has blocked a particular user.
It doesn't mean that you can't really see it by a third method, which I will not talk about under this post. Just that it appears to be deleted on the face of the comment.
Now there is another situation where a whole thread may disappear. Where there's no mention of the existence of a thread that once had been on the post.
Such a situation can happen several ways.
The most simple situation is where the author of the comment has deleted their comment before anyone has replied. This is a relatively new site feature that has happened within the last year.
I can not give an example of this, because it's just not there. 🤷🏻♂️
There is no way to see that comment, even by the author of that comment once it has been deleted. Must mention this not necessarily true on any given post. Posts just don't operate the same way as comments or replies.
Now if someone replies to a comment before the author has deleted it, the whole thread will still be visible. There's is nothing the comments author can do about the visibility of the whole thread.
This is not true for the author of the post. The posts author may choose to delete all replies and comments. Therefore everything disappears. Notice the time frames on the next two screenshots. As well as the reply count.
Even the reply count is modified.
Must mention those reply counts include both comments and replies. It's not just comments or just replies.
This actually has a lot to do with how you have set any given posts notifications. You may think you will be getting all replies, when you in truth are only being notified of just all comments.
This shows that this site makes a distinction between posts, threads, comments and replies.
Some other possible screenshots..
This will make the whole thread disappear! Notice that all are deleted.
