one issue with trees, is how to handle revisions and edits, I suggest allowing the author to edit everything he/she has authored, even if it screws up the conversation, that way, you still possess control of your writing. People must take caution then to respond to a comment that may be later deleted or even edited. The timestamp will reflect this. Disqus preserves the comments, and I think that limits making them. So I would strongly recommend doing it the other way. I think mal intent will be minimal, but essentially we need to edit every node, the same as wikis, not preserve the comment chain to its original form. I don't think it is required we have the meta-software to store every edit for now either. That would be a redundant software headache for now. This model would propose an excellent contrast to wiki, which would be that you can't edit others comments, but you can rewrite your own. - David Lynch