Martin Belam, on making changes to community sections such as commenting systems:

My own take is that opposition or love of nested or threaded comments is a religious issue — akin to top-posting/bottom-posting in emails. Not only are you fully committed to your preference, you simply can’t see any justification for doing it the other way.

I totally agree. And not only can you not see the justification for the alternative, it’s also impossible to isolate why one approach just ‘feels right’ to you, and not the other.

Although potentially your tastes can change over time, subconsciously influenced by what you repeatedly see around you…