"Writing comments to Medium posts feels awkward because each comment is treated as a blog post." This is also awkward from the reader point of view. Trying to follow a comment chain on medium is frustrating as it only shows the first level, diving in switches pages, and often, a need to press a second "load all comments" button. Then the back button to wind your way back up. Is there some sound reasoning for why it w…
Maybe to have the UI less cluttered. Just assuming here.
It might be a resource issue, because of all the content publication outlets there are they have to make that the best.
Right now, someone can easily post a Medium article here, or on Reddit, and get two different discussions on the same content each with their own features and community standards - without mixing them or trying to define what it means to start a response thread on Medium.
Because Medium's focus is most likely on being a publication platform, they probably see comments and responses to comments as Medium articles within themselves within the context of that thread. The UI seems clunky in comparison to HN or Reddit, or even Digg, but that may be "the point." If so, I still think they got it wrong, but only because they need to more formally execute against this vision.
Today, authors who understand this paradigm right a "response blog post" and link to the one they are responding to and provide context before making a long form response. I think Medium is trying to capture this, but they haven't yet.