A potential solution would be to set a minimum width for comments, and if the nesting would make a comment too narrow, that comment is allowed to extend to the right. But (importantly) it doesn’t make other comments in the same thread wider, so you only have to scroll horizontally to continue deep threads.
I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere, but I can’t think where. (Possibly HN? They have arbitrarily deep threads, I don’t recall how they’re handled.)
It would be a strong partial solution to use the whole width of the screen—don’t let the lines of text for each comment be any longer, but if the comments are deeply nested, get rid of the gray space on the sides and suppress the sidebar on the right.
Arbitrarily deep threads become unreadable—you literally get lines that are one letter long.
A potential solution would be to set a minimum width for comments, and if the nesting would make a comment too narrow, that comment is allowed to extend to the right. But (importantly) it doesn’t make other comments in the same thread wider, so you only have to scroll horizontally to continue deep threads.
I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere, but I can’t think where. (Possibly HN? They have arbitrarily deep threads, I don’t recall how they’re handled.)
It would be a strong partial solution to use the whole width of the screen—don’t let the lines of text for each comment be any longer, but if the comments are deeply nested, get rid of the gray space on the sides and suppress the sidebar on the right.