Using a default theme now instead of a full custom job which inevitably caused issues, I’ve stopped using self-comments as post addenda; they now simply appear in the comments area. However, this made me realize that my hypothesized comments-as-addenda plugin wouldn’t need to create a whole new, parallel and internal quasi-commenting system for such entry updates. Rather, it could just use the current ability of a post author to add a comment directly from the post edit screen by adding a checkbox to mark a comment as “post update”. The plugin would then intelligently inject a comments list consisting only of these post-update comments at the end of the post’s content; all other comments—including any the post author posted but did not mark internally as a post-update—would appear as usual in the normal comments area, minus any post-update comments. So, really, any plugin for this feature could simply piggyback on the existing comments system rather than building something entirely separate. My assumption is that such a plugin also could run a “send pings” process from any such post-update comments, and also presumably include these post-update comments in site search and in the post content itself in RSS feeds, so subscribers would see them as updated items in their feed readers. Now if only someone would see this, think it’s a terrific idea, and make a plugin.

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Addenda

1. I still also want an internal pings/mentions mechanism, kept separate and apart from pings and mentions that come from other sites, to build a self-referential contextual network across the blog over time.