Good morning to you, the loyal Defamer reader. A few quick administrative notes to share with you on this Monday morning. First off, Seth is taking a well-deserved vacation this week; while we're all going to miss him, we're happy to announce that Amy Kaufman has agreed to join us for the next two days in a guest blogger capacity. For those of you that are unfamiliar, here's a quick bio.
Amy is a Bostonian-turned-Angeleno who graduated from the journalism program at the University of Southern California last spring. During college, where she was one of the rare pale-skinned brunettes, she had a column in the school newspaper entitled “Fish of Out Water” in which she wrote about finding her way in L.A. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, where she interviewed Sting and penned profiles of the likes of Mandy Moore and Kat Von D. She recently finished a stint at the Wall Street Journal, covering topics including a potential California state ban on helium-filled foil balloons (you know, the ones shaped like Hannah Montana sold at hospital gift shops) to the trials of the modern-day ‘indie’ musician.Please give Amy a warm welcome! One last thing while we've got your undivided attention. You may have heard this already, but after months of hard work and dedication on the part of our design and tech department, we are introducing — wait for it — threaded comments sometime later today. What does that mean, exactly? Follow us after the jump for a long-winded explanation. MORE >>
What's threaded commenting?
Threading is a way to make comments read more like conversations instead of a bunch of disconnected single replies. Now, when someone says something interesting enough to get replies from other readers, all those replies will appear directly below the original comment. Each of these blocks is called a "thread"—kind of like in Gmail. The first comment in a thread will have a few distinguishing features, among them, the number of replies in the thread along with the time of the most recent reply.
Click the arrow on the lower right side to open a reply input box directly underneath the comment—there's no need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to reply. 
Once your reply publishes, you'll notice that like in an IM conversation, your avatar will appear on the right. 
Replies to replies—sometimes known as second or third (or fourth) level replies—will not be indented as is the custom in most forums. Instead, second and third level replies will be collapsed.
