Comments are channels, not one lossy list
The comment model this site will adopt once the Issues and Discussions providers land.
A post owns zero or more ordered comment channels. Each channel keeps its own provider, topology, and freshness, because flattening them loses information that readers and moderators both rely on.
Topology is preserved
- Issue comments form a flat ordered stream.
- Discussion comments preserve replies as a tree.
- External providers own their own native structure.
The interface may present channels as tabs or as adjacent sections. The model never fabricates a reply graph by merging two providers.
Freshness is explicit
A channel declares snapshot, live, hybrid, or embed mode. The page shows when a snapshot was captured, and a failed live request keeps the snapshot and reports a non-blocking provider status.
Carriers are classified first
An Issue or Discussion provisioned by a widget is a comment carrier. Carrier classification runs before article selection, so a provider-created record cannot become an article through a publication label, and its body can never override canonical fields.
Markdown · content/posts/0003-comment-channels.md · archive