This thread is applicable to this discussion I believe. Perhaps NodeBB can leapfrog what's currently out there by a happy medium between nested comments and forked conversations. I dunno... it seems like we could allow 1 level of comments on a post, but not 2 (so no comment on a comment, only comment on a post). But --- we could build up forking functionality to allow forking of posts.
So if someone really did want to comment on a comment, they could fork that and keep going. After all, confusion and lack of context is the complaint against reddit-like discussion isn't it? If we allowed one level of comments only, and then required forking after that, it might be the happy medium. Context would theoretically always be there.