the crowd of us opposed to the change it relates to haven't done the constructive thing of offering a viable alternative. This post addresses that omission.
Thanks -- this is definitely more constructive.
However, it also implies that we should be printing ...
Joe Smith [the question owner] will be notified of your answer.
... at the bottom of every answer input form.
In other words, if you assume that the question owner will be notified of your answer to their question, why wouldn't you also assume that the post owner will be notified of your comment on their post?
As I said in another answer:
There is no flow of discussion in the typical case -- comments always address the person "on the podium" (aka the post owner) unless they explicitly indicate otherwise. In other words, every post is like a little blog entry or presentation, owned by the person who wrote it. Like so.
During a presentation, when someone raises their hand in the audience and asks a question, it is quite safe to assume they are not addressing another random audience member.
I'm opposed to adding a bunch of random clutter signage UI, when the defaults "just work" in the most typical comment cases. Remember the median number of post comments on Stack Overflow is zero and the average is two.
(source: hse.gov.uk)
What I could support is a dynamic rejection of comments that contain @nomatch strings which don't address any valid commenter, editor, or the post owner. At least in that case we are telling you just in time as you submit the comment, rather than cluttering the UI and making it even noisier.
