1. I also use del.icio.us to track current conversations; but I remove links that haven't had comments for a while, which means I usually only have somewhere between 0-5 links for my conversation tag.

I actually would like to keep the links longer than that, just to document what I wrote, but:
1. I'm a bit reluctant to keep this kind of data public over a longer period of time, nicely assembled for the world to see
2. I figured I could just as well use google to find older conversations (which doesn't always work). Here it definitely pays off to use unique nicknames in your postings, and to actually remember them.

Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by mardoen

2. Ah, and I really like to use feeds to track comments/threads if the blog/forum software allows this.

Sadly many of these comment feeds are not specific enough; e.g. lots of blogs have a single feed for all comments of all entries; and Flickr has a single feed for each discussion group, but not for a single thread (or I just didn't look hard enough). Which means you could theoretically use these feeds to track a conversation, but in reality it just creates a lot of traffic in your aggregator that you have to filter manually.

Still, notification via feed is actually the best way to keep track of a conversation; it's just not available everywhere (yet).

Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by mardoen

3. This is a real problem that needs some attention. Back in the day we used to use email mailing lists (and usenet) to foster community around a niche subject. This had the great advantage that the conversations were archived and searchable. But now we've exploded the conversation all over the web in a mix of primary blog posts and secondary comments. It's damn near impossible to just find all the comments you've left, let alone track all the places that might be part of the conversation.

I've tried all sorts of techniques to do this and they just don't work. I've also thought about trying to build feeds back into my own blog of everything I post anywhere but that's also too hard.

The problem's there, but I don't see any solutions.

Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Julian Bond

4. Some blog software (ExpressionEngine) has email notification of comments to a thread that you can subscribe to. That makes it easy. It will also only send one email until you visit the thread so you don't get overwhelmed with email. Visit the thread and it will start the email notices again so can continue to follow. Wish all the blogs utilized this.

Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by PXLated