What browser is this written for? I'm not saying it needs to be cross-compatible, but knowing which it's most likely to work as intended in might help here.

Anyway, some thoughts on top of what others have already mentioned -

1. Using a popup for new messages is probably not the best way to go - it constrains what users can do, preventing the use of any links on the page or scrolling down and looking at other comments/replies already there, or even opening the original page in a new tab. If they change their minds, there are only two ways out, the cancel or the X, before they can do anything else, instead of just allowing the user to directly go to their watchlist or whatever if they realise they'd rather be there. Something more like how wordpress does it by default would probably be better, just having a regular comment input in a linkable div - it can expand at top or bottom and the rest of the page is still the rest of the page.
   
2. Why is the reply button on the left? I know that's the current setup, but such is a forward action, and in ltr languages forward seems more to the right.
3. Everything is so very large. Less bulky containers would be good, not just for lack of a ToC, but also simply to make it easier to follow things in general. Everything collapsed only gets under ten threads visible, and expanded about four comments fit on this screen, even when each comment is only a couple lines long, because of how large the containers are - 167px tall just to say 'Okay.' to someone shouldn't be necessary.
4. Actually, why not add a ToC? Sure, it's a dynamic page/feed/thing, but a straight list of everything on the page at the time could be useful for desktop users.
   
5. Why is one's own new comment marked as unread? Or is that what the green means?
6. Do the target communities want the user info so prominently displayed? I got complaints about that when I was working on this before, at least. so it may something worth looking into especially since if not it is kind of cluttering (and there are also more social concerns).
   
7. It'd be nice if we could get away from the star thing as a design pattern. It's just confusing - watched pages, featured articles, subscribed threads... it should only be one of those, not all three.
8. Having the green highlighting of new stuff go away entirely after coming to it could be problematic - folks don't necessarily read as fast as they scroll or whatever, and when entering a whole mass of things it helps to have an indication what was new even when reading it. Having it go away immediately would make it likely for folks to miss things entirely as a result, especially since there doesn't seem to be any middle ground or quick way to jump from new thing to new thing.
   
9. Having the entire header as a collapse/expand handle is good, though I assume it won't bounce in reality because for some reason it started bouncing between expanded and collapsed when I clicked on one.
   
10. Something about reddit.
11. Where would the tools/options for specific comments go? Folks will need to be able to edit them, delete them, etc.
12. Two lines of textarea in which to reply isn't much. Even if one is only leaving a single line comment, it's still more comfortable to have more room in which to edit, and many comments/replies can be much longer. Even the editwarning is more than two lines.
13. Reply button should probably go away when replying, or turn into a header or something. Otherwise folks might be tempted to click it again to see if they can reply multiple times, but having it cancel the reply is not likely to be expected behaviour.
14. That little triangle thing on the reply box seems out of place. I'm not a fan of those triangles in general, but really they seem to be for flyouts and such that need some affordance to indicate what they're attached to, but a reply doesn't feel like a flyout, even if it is expanding. And it should be pretty obvious what it's attached to since it's inserting right below the target.
15. What's the number in the oval for and can it be used for navigation?
16. VisualEditor doesn't work in all browsers. I assume this is laid out with that in mind?
17. The visual difference the headers provide should be more significant. Somehow.
18. The 'Be nice' thing actually seems kind of scolding - implying that folks aren't normally nice and need to be constantly reminded to behave. While this is indeed the case on many projects, it seems somewhat contrary to the idea of assuming good faith.

Hope that helps, or is at least coherent. This is an interesting start.

On 30/04/13 22:16, Brandon Harris wrote:

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-— Isarra